FASHION INFO

Fall 2010: Carolina Herrera

Saturday, May 29, 2010

NEW YORK, February 15, 2010

By Nicole Phelps

In her last couple of outings, Carolina Herrera has explored the arty side of her oeuvre, getting baroque with her fabric combinations or heavily embellishing them. That's been to the detriment of her refined, elegant message and, no doubt, to the quiet despair of the ladies who love it. So it was a positive development that she came back to the ultra-luxe side of things for Fall, and for the most part, employed a lighter, more familiar hand. The designer limited herself to brushstroke prints and floral embroideries, while letting silhouette, bold colors like Prussian blue and deep red, and sable fur (plenty of it) do the talking.

Delivering on her "Lady of the Sleeves" reputation, Herrera puffed up the volume on the arms of day dresses and off-the-shoulder evening versions alike. There was a fullness, too, to high-waisted, fluid trousers that were paired with grand white blouses or statement-making jackets and coats—the former in, say, crocodile with matching wool sleeves, and the latter in camel double-faced cashmere and sable. The teenage models inevitably strained to pull off these looks as confidently as the rather older target customer eventually will. After all, these ladylike clothes require the kind of bank balance and sophisticated good taste it takes a few years to attain.

Fall 2010: Alberta Ferretti

MILAN, February 26, 2010

By Sarah Mower

Alberta Ferretti has whittled her brand proposition down to the things she does very well: fluttery chiffon, a dressy princess coat, and a quietly pretty event dress. There's no harm in that focus. Part of the battle in fashion is reaching a point of clarity where people know what you're about and why they should shop with you—and then sticking to it.

As far as dresses are concerned, the show began where it ended: with trompe l'oeil jewelry in the neckline of a nude, vertically pleated number. Ferretti navigated the current vibe for barely-there color and covered arms, sometimes with crystal sparkles planted on near-invisible net, the way you'd see in figure-skater outfits (had she been thinking Winter Olympics?). The coats, too, had the fit-and-flare silhouette that has been developing somewhere along the line this season as a mainstream, feminized response to the rigid A-line look that is taking hold in many collections.

Alexander McQueen Fall 2010

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Alexander McQueen's last works were given final honors by his trusted team in a hushed and dignified showing that went to his core as a designer who scaled the heights of couture accomplishment. Sarah Burton, his right hand, described how, in beginning this collection, McQueen had turned away from the world of the Internet, which he had so powerfully harnessed in his last show. "He wanted to get back to the handcraft he loved, and the things that are being lost in the making of fashion," she said. "He was looking at the art of the Dark Ages, but finding light and beauty in it. He was coming in every day, draping and cutting pieces on the stand." The 16 outfits shown had been 80 percent finished at the time of his death.

What McQueen was preparing had a poetic, medieval beauty that dealt with religious iconography while recapturing memories of his own past collections. He had ordered fabric that translated digital photographs of paintings of high-church angels and Bosch demons into hand-loomed jacquards, then taken the materials and cut stately caped gowns and short draped dresses. In its ornate surface narrative, that might read as a kick against the plain and restrained direction fashion is taking, but in their own way, the fluted, attenuated lines of his long dresses suggested a calm and simplicity. Instead of aggression, they transmitted the grace of the medieval Madonnas and Byzantine empresses McQueen had been studying.