Donna Karan, Jeremy Scott

The fashion industry often uses the past to sell a future that is six months away. Because just as sure­ly as designers are selling clothes, they are also hawking reassurance, comfort and familiarity. What do customers want? They want the same thing they had last season on­ly different.

Donna Karan's collection drew upon the rhythms of New York City, but from a time when this town's possibilities far outstripped its dangers. The collection focused on feminine dresses with full skirts and a cinched waist. Shoulder pads gave the silhouette a squared-off finish. But the garments, in their nostalgic blur, lacked the languid sensuality that is the essence of Ka­ran's work. The presentation for spring 2003 seemed to trip over the awkwardness of a modernist relying too heavily on the past.

Nostalgia can be a tough sell. The purity of a memory has a way of being clouded by personal expe­rience. One person's recollection of the 1950s may be filled with im­ages of family dinners, dressing for the theater and fancy cocktails. An­other person may recall it as a time of stifling social rules and narrow-minded thinking.

The future is a better, but more challenging, option. The slate is clean and folks can envision the best possible world. But it requires no less care in setting the scene, no less eloquence in arguing the point-of-view.

Thankfully, few designers play out the future as a space age fanta­sy in which workers dress like crew members of "Star Trek's" Enter­prise. Only Jeremy Scott remains wedded to the idea of fashion as a craft defined by feathers and glue guns. Fashion has evolved to the point that the dominant vocabulary references sport, informality and comfort. The industry has ceased trying to press artificial formality on customers. Instead it wrestles with ways to transform the banal— cargo pants, T-shirts, board shorts and tank tops—into clothes that can function in an office that aims for decorum and that can go to a gala and not diminish the festive-ness of the occasion.

Rick Owens, John Bartlett

Designer Rick Owens showed his line in a spare loft Friday after­noon. His signature aesthetic is dragging trousers, unfinished hems, jackets that remain ill-formed until they crumple and fold in around the body. Owens layers stretched sweaters over droopy knit skirts. Gauze trousers revel in their wrinkles. His colors are ivory and gray and earth tones diluted of any intensity.

Looking at the clothes, one is tempted to declare them unimpres­sive. And for fall 2002, they are ex­traordinarily dour. But part of their appeal—that is to the wearer, not the observer—is their ordinariness.

They serve the same purpose as the sweats and T-shirts that people regularly slip into on a Saturday af­ternoon. But how much more satis­fying might it be if the T-shirt was soft as a feather? If the baggy pants had an indulgent softness and a more flattering fit than the sweat pants that stick out awkwardly on the side? With those changes, the walk-the-dog clothes now don't look so out of place at lunch. And more importantly, the wearer feels better in them.

Designer John Barlett has a sim­ilar, though not as disheveled, sen­sibility. For spring, he offers men cargo pants in hot pink, board shorts layered over yoga pants, scuba vests tucked under blazers and laminated, linen jeans. He taps into the allure of surfing, blending the ruggedness and adventurous-ness of nature and sports with his own polished version of the aes­thetic that has grown up around it.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 780