Last week was NYC Fashion Week, Fall/Winter '09 shows. This is the first season where I managed to attend many shows and have so much fun. My list starts with: Nary Manivong/Kate Cusack, Laura Dawson, Venexiana, Alexandre Herchcovitch, Ports 1961, Custo Barcelona, and Rad Hourani.
Overall, my favorite one was Alexandre Herchcovitch { pronounced HER-CH-CO-VI-TCH} took me a while to get that right!! Anyway, I loved his collection, it was bold and edgy, with the right amount of feminine touches to it. He was able to bring that about through his choices of colors---from deep berry tones to vibrant corals, black, metallics and grays. There was a bit of the roaring 20's feel to the styling, with the head pieces and accessories (gloves, clutches, etc.). Presentation was superb.....I even got to go backstage (where there was quite a drama, read Fashiona's blog!!!) and meet him, spoke to him for a minute.....he was extremely nice too!
All the other shows were great: Rad Hourani, was quite fresh, the contrast of the dark colors and tetris-like structural shapes he used against the white of the presentation space made the whole collection appreciable. Just like I made the effort to meet Alexandre after the show, I managed to meet with Rad.....A young, soft spoken and worldly designer of Jordanian heritage. I was also able exchange a few sentences in Arabic with him.....Watch out design world, he is the next Mcqueen......
Nary Manivong had the whole feminine asymmetrical silhouettes in black, navy and pop colors, like red and yellow. Instead of a runway show, he had his models pose on a platform--very picturesqu. His stylist, Amber Votel (who's worked with several Conde Naste Editors) used Kate Cusack's line of zipper jewelery to accessorize the look. Just about 2 weeks before the show, I worked on Kate's editorial campaign to promote her jewelry designs, which was pretty challenging and awesome (although we were on set for 15 hours, and by the end, we were all knackered!!). Mistakenly enough, I went and introduced myself to Nary's twin brother and he was laughing and told me that his brother was by the models...oh well, that could be spared huh;)
Laura Dawson had a whole futuristic elegance going on, zippers, black, and gray......the models came out of some sort of hexagonal shaped dome or thing....I dunno! The collection was pretty good too. As usual, Custo takes the award for presentation....colors everywhere, lots of fun....although silhouettes were beautifully fitted, it was the exotic prints with different shapes that brought out the models' forms......One thing, they did a great casting, their models rocked and they could all walk!!!
Finally, Ports 1961 was very zen-like. They had an Indian cultural band perform as the models walked out with their Far East inspired silhouettes (mostly Indian). Metallics and earth tones, with a throw of bright fuscia and black here and there, against a cream colored runway-----Definitely inspired by the many travels of Tia Cibani (The designer).
And so, an end to one season and looking forward to the next......
