Zac Posen and Francisco Costa are like ham and eggs when it comes to how they dress women. Mr. Posen is all charm and razzle-dazzle. On Thursday night, he invited the 5 Browns, the sibling piano virtuosos, to play while he sent out a grab bag of Grandma’s clothes. Earlier, Mr. Costa, of Calvin Klein, presented an austere-looking group of stiff and mothy dresses that reflected his research into new fabrics.
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See Slide Shows of theCalvin Klein, Isaac Mizrahi,Ralph Lauren, Ralph Rucciand Zac Posen Fall 2009 Collections.
Watching the Posen show, as a model flitted past in a golden lace dress and a choker, an editor said, weighing the two talents, “You know, this is what the girls will go for.”
Well, maybe. Despite the ransacking of various Hollywood musicals and melodramas for those peaked shoulders and lamé cocktail dresses — something done so often that hardly anyone objects anymore — Mr. Posen did have some sweet clothes in the old-girl mess. His press notes plugged the collection’s “dynamic shapes and whimsical decoupage of materials.” That just means that Mr. Posen used a lot of romantic fabrics and revisited historical shapes, not unlike John Galliano.
Still, most of these styles, like a ruffled violet and gray silk evening dress with a cancan hem and nipped-waist Spencer jackets over flirty silk print skirts or sleek pants, will sing on a hanger. So, in that respect, Mr. Posen wins.
But what about those mothy dresses at Calvin Klein, or a dense black coat that appears to have the texture and shimmer of cracked asphalt? This collection — one of Mr. Costa’s finest since he took over women’s design at Calvin Klein — accomplishes many things. It opens the conversation more aggressively to fabrics made by new processes; such fabrics are already used in depth by European and Japanese designers. It shows how potent and continually enriching the minimalist template first laid down by designers like Jil Sander and Yohji Yamamoto is. And it provides — or should provide — Mr. Costa with a road map for his future work at Calvin Klein. His designs could use more consistency.
Photographs don’t really convey the detail and movement of the clothes. Viewed straight on, a jacket in pierced black wool felt with a crescent hem and an A-line almost suggests Dior’s New Look. Viewed in profile, though, the skirt sweeps away from the body. It’s actually based on a pants pattern, Mr. Costa said. Some of the prettiest dresses combine two matte black fabrics in a simple puzzle design. Just as lovely were fitted shifts in stretch black silk crepe with a pleated piece of fabric snaking around the body and over the shoulder.
On the demerit side, Mr. Costa sometimes seems too absorbed in the technical wonders of the fabrics and the design so that some of the shapes (and the thinking behind them) aren’t as refined as they might be. It’s not that there are gimmicks in his minimalism, but you can’t help thinking he could whittle it down further.
Ralph Rucci deals with all the current motifs — reflective fabrics, tailoring, layers and cutouts set in relief — but in his fashion. In a sparkling show on Friday that closedFashion Week, Mr. Rucci offered a range of suits and coats in black double-faced cashmere banded or inset with black patent leather. More subtle and interesting was a spare black wool cocktail suit etched with black beads at the back of the cropped jacket and shown with a liquid black shell.
As tailored as the collection was to his customers, Mr. Rucci pushed himself in new directions. There was a remarkable little dress in what appeared to be crushed black lace; it was transparent but only just. Sable pelts were individually sewn on tulle and shown on the reverse side, so that the coat looked graphic and modern. And Mr. Rucci turned his love of knots into an all-over knotted black leather coat and dress.
In a week that has seen all kinds of tough chic, the one designer who extends her long leg to the opposite side, expertly bridging the classy and the sexy, is L’Wren Scott. Serving chicken potpies to her luncheon guests, who included the actors Kyra Sedgwick and Dustin Hoffman, as well as her boyfriend Mick Jagger, Ms. Scott sent out a steady march of her signature dresses (now in forest green and a leaf jacquard with red), with each model stopping in a line and turning her back to the audience to display not merely her own assets but also the designer’s knowledge of tailoring and fit.
This is what her customer’s buy, in addition to her sexy headmistress dresses and slithery gowns, now dipping low in the back: they buy Ms. Scott’s judgment. This well-edited collection builds upon her style, with some kinky additions that would have tickled Helmut Newton, like a half-transparent trench coat, but the quality to note is the refinement. More designers should take the time to do that instead of blindly moving on.
By opening with evening clothes, Ralph Lauren signaled that elegance was the message. His collection was solid, though not surprising, with tailored tweeds over silvery evening slips and some delicious antiqued lace. Hobo coats in tweed patchwork were probably not meant as a comment on hard times, though with a vintage luster to the ivory and champagne silks, they at least left you with the thought.
If there is one word that sums up Isaac Mizrahi’s wonderful helter-skelter collection, it’s antibranding. Mr. Mizrahi doesn’t give a branded look, all predictable. He gives a fashion look. So you can’t quantify his oversize coats, papa sweaters and slinky drawstring trousers with fur slides any more than you can say you’ve seen a chic hunter-plaid coatdress on another designer’s runway. Because you haven’t. This is one man’s vision. Well, imagine that.
