A typical day of Fashion Week can be a schizophrenic experience. On the one hand, there are designers who take their clothing and the business of making women look attractive very seriously. Then there are those for whom the whole thing is a clownish hoot.
As entertaining as he is, Michael Kors does not treat women’s clothing as comedy. Rugged elegance was his theme, and that’s a cue for many of his touchstones: buffalo-check blanket coats, hand knits and loads of shaggy fur in stadium coats and floppy hats that make you want to decamp to a fireplace in Aspen. He also emphasized the hard-soft combinations: a black mohair dress with a patchwork of leather panels or a herringbone tweed dress with feather skirt.
Reed Krakoff is of like mind. His collection does not reference any eras — he’s interested in a modern uniform along architectural lines: a stellar piece of outerwear over a shirt and a cropped pant or a skirt with a mid-calf boot. His show emphasized coats and jackets and leathers — and luxe: in black, a shearling coat with beaver panels or, in alabaster white, a jersey dress with a python waist.
On the other end, the Blonds and Jeremy Scott like to have a good time and watch others do the same. While we still haven’t got over the chaps from Scott’s show last season, die-hard fans will be giddy with delight at the unicorns, technicolor furs and Bart Simpson references. Yes, that’s right. Bring it.
