Monday, July 31, 2017

Creatures Of The Wind Spring/Summer 2016.

Thurs. 09/10/2015.





Creatures Of The Wind Spring/Summer 2016.

Thinking outside the traditional fashion box is something that is bandied about over many a designer, and just because said designer might be offering something slightly more esoteric than what the fashion crowd is used to, does not make it actually so that they are thinking anywhere near outside the box. When it comes to Creatures Of The Wind designers Christopher Peters and Shane Gabier, the thinking outside the norm assertion is wholeheartedly, the unvarnished truth. Their Spring/Summer 2016 collection provided ample corroborative proof of this, in a collection that was equally idiosyncratic as it was haute and wearable.

Peters posited the query before the show, "When does something that's come and gone, come back into fashion?" Well, Good Damn Question! For Peters and Gabier the answer it would seem for this outing was a forward motion approach that encompassed many different styles and eras that have come and gone and frappĂ© them together into a cohesive unified statement that exemplified all the hallmarks of Peters and Gabier unique fashion perspective. As per usual, the duo took a eclectic view of the fashion they love, through a retrospective prism that time traveled through multiple decades and eras and somehow managed to never feel vintage-y, but did have a kind of cuckoo sensibility which imbued the collection with a vivre which made one smile in delight at the duo's sublime mix mastery.

The best takeaway, surprisingly, was that the most covetable outfits, were the most simplistic utterances. For your consideration, a stunning reefer coat in a Bronze Brocade tapestry print was casually worn atop a pair of killer lean Black Leather trousers and a colour-blocked top in Black, White and Rust Red, all the eccentricity was found in the pattern of the coat, but otherwise, a city chic assemblage for any woman of any style stripe. Or, try on for size, Exit No. 32 on Maria Borges, which had all the earmarks of Uptown, worn with a Downtown flavour, Black Topcoat worn with a sliver of a print skirt and textured White top was channeling ODLR in the best sense of the word.

Gabier and Peters have a rather bighearted and whimsical way with presenting serious fashion, one that keeps the eye of the viewer engaged and at attention, a fine talent to be sure. If the duo keeps presenting brilliant envisioned collections as they have been, they could become part of the new guard of NY Fashion Heavy Hitters. One hopes in the utmost for that to come to pass.





That's All.





Bye4Now!

Sunday, July 30, 2017

Nicholas K Spring/Summer 2016.

Thus. 09/10/2015.






The Nicholas K woman of Spring 2016 is an Urban Adventuress cloaked in "Mad Max" Caliber nomadic layers and tough, yet pretty, swaths of fabric rustling about her in billowing and voluminous amounts! Nicholas and Christopher Kunz's Spring selections were a spectacular pre-future/post apocalyptic nomadic mishmash that summoned images of the elegance of Bedouins, T. E. Lawrence and Paratroopers all in the same breath.

The saving grace of this look was the exciting juxtaposing of roughness and lightness, using featherweight parachute nylons and filmy chiffons, the militaristic styling and cuts imbued the rigid uprightness of the Martial outfits of soldiers and paratroopers with a flowing liquidity that merged into something if not exactly quixotic, certainly quirky! One could take the designers to task for perhaps one too many riffs on this trope, because the collection felt somewhat overloaded with ideas, there was never per se, an exact repeat of an outfit, but far too many variants on the theme at hand. While this was distracting, it did not detract from the proceedings so much as it led to a bit of visual fatigue.

The collection opened with shades of White from creamy to optic, and moved on through inky Indigo dip-dying, to Desert Bronze and Hazelnut Brown, to Black, Mahogany and a rather spicy shade of deep Saffron that worked as the Kunz's one go at colour in the mostly dark and neutral palette of the collection. The Kunz's also counterpointed all those floaty and filmy fabrics with much tougher weather beaten leathers and suede as well as that urban favorite material, denim. These acted as a more hard edged foil to all the gossamer light material wafting down the runway and enhanced the look of those outfits by given them a bit more gutsiness and attitude.

When it was all said and done, Nicholas and Christopher put down a a seriously chic showing fit for the Urban Road Warrioress. It may have had it's hiccups, which were admittedly, very few, but in the end, the collection was a major success.





That's All.





Bye4Now. 

Saturday, July 1, 2017

Victor Alfaro Spring/Summer 2016

Weds. 09/09/2015.






Comebacks are never really easy, and are usually fraught with disappointment and dejection, for one may have too high of hopes of what kind of reception they will receive upon trying to rise back up to the stature of former days. Victor Alfaro seems to have none of those thoughts clouding his mind and is just quietly, unassumingly, doing his own thing and doing it well and reaping the benefits from simple, honest, hard work. He doesn't even seem to entertain the idea of "Comeback" for him it just was the right time to get back to what he was doing previously.

What that, gladly, translates into for Spring/Summer 2016 was a collection full of riches to plunder for the woman that came of age in Alfaro's Fashion Heyday, and it was altogether evident that the aesthetic Alfaro mined and was one of the prime arbiters of in the halcyon 90's is still fully intact, but calibrated to today's moment and the woman of this time, even if she is the same woman of 20 years ago! A richesse sense of the relaxed permeated Alfaro's Excellent collection, Languid would be a spectacular word. Louche would be too, but it implies something more overtly sensual than what Alfaro is offering. His clothes drape and swish around the body in bias-cut perfection, now tweaked with inventive seaming and cutting techniques and more liquid fabrics that have developed since the 1990's.

Alfaro had a somewhat Southwestern vibe pulsating through the collection, that offered up a couple utterly delicious Blanket Coats that hinted towards the Native as well as Georgia O'Keefe. That Southwestern tone was reflected in the pallette, with shimmery, sandy tones and a strong Orange-y Yellow that evoked the Navajo in it's colouration. Even saying that, the sense of modern, minimal, urbanism was what was evoked most. Alfaro is equipping his woman to be as much a Urban nomad as a windswept desert wandering one. Although, it'd be hard to imagine his woman wandering any desert (with the exception of Palm Desert) in his Jaw-Slackening bias-cut gowns that he showed early in the collection in Black, and then reiterated at the finale with a trio of gowns in luminous moonlight shades, colour blocked by using intersplicings of sheer net. It was a quietly powerful example of Alfaro's talent and for the woman craving that retro aesthetic updated for right this minute, it couldn't have been a more spellbinding present! 





That's All.





Bye4Now!