![]() His dresses in pale peach and delicate beige simply didn’t register. In some ways, though, one would almost rather a designer get caught up in far-flung adventures and safari animals-and have things go awry-than to see no evidence of passion at all.Īt Calvin Klein, Francisco Costa was too subtle, too restrained. But instead of evoking luxurious joy, the result was labored and self-conscious. The models’ hair, molded into place and painted in shades of orange and turquoise, added to the kaleidoscope effect. His collection was a raucous mix of colors and embroidery, metallic shorts and jeweled collars. The designer Thakoon Panichgul also went traveling, although his imagination took him to India. Karan, despite her warm and good-hearted global embrace, was too caught up in a spectrum of muddy hues, which, when wrapped around the body as form-fitting jersey dresses, just left one feeling sad rather than reassured. The best pieces from Kors’s collection were the ones in which his inspiration was less literal, such as when he was moved by the rich colors of the African landscape: the fiery orange of a sunset, the olive green and golden yellows of the horizon. Doesn’t anyone ever spend a bit of time in the cities of that distant continent, perhaps having a nice dinner in Cape Town or visiting a jazz club in Johannesburg? Do they ever visit an art gallery? In every case, one wonders why it is that Africa is always about the animals, the mosquito netting, or a treacherous ride down a creepy-crawly infested river with a hoary steamboat captain. ![]() Designers regularly go off on an Isak Dinesen bender. Karan got caught up in references to mud cloth while Kors was more captivated by animal prints. Both Donna Karan and Michael Kors found inspiration in Africa. Blame it on the fabric industry, but a host of designers have embraced computer-generated techno prints that, while never exactly the same, all end up blurring together into an abstract, didn’t-I-see-this-at-Balenciaga-already mush. So many designers have latched on to the same trends that it has become a kind of intra-industry competition to see who does them best. It was a refreshing collection because it went its own way the designer was unwilling to fall under the spell of fuchsia, cobalt blue, and bright orange. Jacobs’s collection was wholly removed from searing colors, nods to Africa and India, and the sea of techno prints that have dominated the runways for spring. It was a surprising presentation, not because one couldn’t imagine a designer finding inspiration in the world of retro musicals, but because the references were oblique and subtle in a season when they have mostly been obvious and heavy-handed. When Jacobs appeared on stage to take his bows, he was dressed like a latter-day dance master in tight black leggings and a black T-shirt. And they carried little bucket-shaped purses reminiscent of a horse’s feedbag. Tinsel bedecked ‘do rags covered their hair. The dresses were as ethereal as the wing of a moth-cellophane frocks softly tinted with color or opaque sheaths fringed in translucent tabs of organza. They wore pointy metallic pumps with slender straps cutting across the top of the foot. One by one the young models stepped from the tableau vivant to march down the stage and back up again. Creativity is something whimsical and fleeting, their rush seemed to suggest. As the music revved, the models marched out briskly with a confident stride, as if there was no time to waste. As the curtain parted on his melancholy stage set, his models sat posed on a wooden stage-circular lights glowing in the background-like they had been caught mid-rehearsal in a 1920s-era dance hall. As the spring 2012 shows wrapped up in New York, designer Marc Jacobs called into question all the vivid colors, cacophonous prints, and aggressively chipper collections that had been presented earlier in the week.
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