Elie Tahari Ophelia Stripe Lace Dress
NEW YORK – A woman's best bet for bounce actualization success? It's still the dress.
["442.32"]But the bounce 2008 styles apparent at Wednesday's aperture of New York Actualization Week were added apart and feminine than the ladylike, able abatement fashions now in stores.
Gwen Stefani's L.A.M.B. accumulating offered both mod frocks and adult sheaths. BCBG Max Azria showed sheer, flowy dresses, while Abaete angry to '40s-inspired sheaths and halters for the collections apparent at Bryant Park.
New York Actualization Week lasts eight days, previewing the spring-summer looks of 60 designers for actualization editors, retail buyers and stylists. Highlights this division will accommodate Ralph Lauren adulatory his 40 years in actualization with a black-tie banquet Saturday night.
Dresses accept been a able trend the accomplished three actualization cycles, but what started with short, boxlike accouterment in the bounce morphed into shirtdresses for fall. It seems abutting season's actualization -- at atomic in aboriginal shows -- is a apart sheath, one that glides over an alarm actualization afterwards afraid to it.
For men, Nautica showed beneath hemlines while Perry Ellis experimented with altered textures, such as bamboo fiber.
L.A.M.B.
Gwen Stefani's L.A.M.B. accumulating was the best awful august of the day. The clothes ranged from awakening mod frocks to wearable-yet-sexy sheath dresses, all cutting out assimilate the aerodrome adjoin a black-and-white video accomplishments on models cutting bulky heels.
The palette was about absolutely atramentous and white.
A scattering of the apparel were costumey -- decidedly a double-breasted covering that she alleged the Abingdon Road covering and a brace of analogous abbreviate shorts. Stefani ability be able to cull this off onstage, but the boilerplate woman would accept agitation cutting it, no bulk how admirable it looked on the runway. Overall, though, Stefani, forth with stylist Andrea Lieberman, offered several looks that were in footfall with her young, hip customer, including a military-inspired anorak with a attending neckline beat with a checkerboard pleated dress and a houndstooth beaded about-face dress with a pleated cape jacket.
MARCHESA
Marchesa is a characterization that has bound become a big amateur on the red carpet. It went for ball with its newest collection.
"That's a goddess dress," gushed Candy Pratts Price, controlling actualization editor at Style.com, back she spotted a long, black, lace-and-tulle slipdress with embroidery, an ivory underlay and award detail at the authority waist.
A strapless clothes fabricated of tulle and covered with gold adornment was appropriately impressive, advancement an actualization of airiness beneath a ample bulk of metal.
["442.32"]Pratts Price additionally acclaimed a accumulation of Indian-inspired apparel busy with gold applique details. Abounding of the colors seemed abiding in the spices of the region, including lemongrass and saffron.
However, one of the best noteworthy gowns was a amethyst strapless clothes that mimicked an amplification flower, with asperous petals of fabric. The clothes absolutely would be beauteous on one of Keren Craig and Georgina Champman's starlet fans, but one has to admiration how that wearer would anytime be able to sit.
Other dresses appeared to be allure a tougher banty than Marchesa's archetypal customer, abnormally some form-fitting beneath dresses with mirrored chaplet and strategically placed cutouts.
TAHARI
Welcome to the softer ancillary of Tahari.
Elie Tahari chose to present his bounce accumulating Wednesday in a white amplitude -- busy with patches of blooming leaves and aerial dresses -- instead of the adjacent alive Bryant Park tents.
The Tahari characterization is best accepted for its tailored pieces, abnormally its well-fitting women's trousers, and they will absolutely be offered abutting season, but the artist said it was time to highlight the long, aqueous look.
"It's happy," he said, abacus that the afflatus was all-around campaign but not a specific place: "Pick anywhere in your imagination."
Floral-print caftans and deconstructed carnival jackets outfitted the mannequins as did apart floor-skimming sundresses -- they were apparently too accidental to be alleged gowns -- in arid colors.
Menswear is a allotment of the collection, too, and the afflatus there was antic influences. The intention, he said, was to action able styles that can move from the burghal mural to weekend excursions.
BCBG MAX AZRIA
One aerial dress floated bottomward the aerodrome afterwards addition at the examination of BCBG Max Azria's bounce collection. The best part: abounding were wearable.
The delicacy came from the fabrics, mostly organza and tulle, in a attenuate arenaceous palette with alone the accidental pop of a bloom pink. Because some of the dresses would accept been arduous on their own, the husband-wife architectonics aggregation of Max and Lubov Azria layered them, generally with a cottony slipdress beneath a blanket dress or one with panels.
["776"]One of the best looks was the first. They alleged it a trenchcoat -- but best would apparently accede the gravel-colored organza apparel a coatdress -- that was beat over a tulle slipdress and nipped at the waist with a covering blanket belt.
Other outstanding apparel were an fair belong over an ivory bustier dress with bulge capacity beat over an ivory slipdress, and a seafoam-colored cottony charmeuse console dress with a anemic gray slipdress with a applique hem.
BCBG's adolescent admirers in the ball apple angry out to the tents at Bryant Park, area Azria will additionally appearance his signature flush accumulating Friday. Ashlee Simpson, Sophia Bush and Ciara were in the advanced row, as was tennis brilliant Martina Hingis.
"It was all actual pretty," Hingis said afterwards the show. "The glassy -- that was absolutely nice."
ABAETE
There can be article actual adult about actuality covered up.
The attending at the Abaete appearance was aggressive by the awning sirens of the 1940s and decidedly Gene Tierney, according to artist Laura Poretzky. It was like Poretzky transported Tierney, who was at one time affiliated to the backward allegorical actualization artist Oleg Cassini, and all her accompany -- Rita Hayworth and Jean Harlow, amid them -- to Miami area they sipped affair and blood-soaked up the Deco-era architecture.
Among the appetizing looks to be offered abutting bounce were a halter-neck striped dress in blush and fleet with analogously atramentous patches of bolt abreast the hem, and a sand-and-peach-colored sheath dress that would hug an alarm figure.
Women who invested in the wide-leg attending for abatement will be able to accumulate those pants at atomic addition season.
Another acceptable continuing trend is the collapsed shoe. Poretzky has a accord with Payless to actualize affordable shoes; the best for bounce was alleged the Hayworth, with a ruched pleated high and annular peep-toe front.
Y & KEI
Designers Hanii Y and Gene Kei capital their bounce Y & Kei accumulating to transform the ethics of the 1960s into article a little added avant-garde and sexy.
"It's a reinterpretation of admirable ... peace, adulation and freedom," Kei, who is Korean, said through an analyst during a presentation in the lower akin of the New York Public Library.
["776"]Models took turns ambit anniversary added in a dim room, cutting chemise dresses with affecting capacity -- array of argent bolt scallops on one, a belted capote on another. It's a attending that formed best on eveningwear, with a atramentous chiffon and ache anorak with a atramentous applique and caviar-beaded abbreviate sleeve dress the best appropriate accouterments of all.
A arduous atramentous chiffon anorak anorak over a cream-colored clothes with an Art Deco burden on the chest additionally would assignment for the designers' "urban hippie" muse.
PERRY ELLIS
The men who abrasion Perry Ellis ability charge a tutorial in fabrics back they go to buy their bounce clothes.
Instead of introducing any groundbreaking accouterment in architectonics on the runway, artist John Crocco experimented with altered textures and fabrics.
A bamboo-fiber account shirt in ablaze chicken was commutual with amplitude affection pinstripe trousers -- and the archetypal additionally wore a bodice sweater fabricated of a alloy of wool, cashmere and cottony angry about his waist. A see-through, about achromatic anorak fabricated of a poly-resin alloy topped a polo shirt that alloyed pima and modal cotton.
The accumulating had a vacation vibe, somewhat of a abandonment for a characterization that's a accoutrement in administration store's clothing sections. Some of the best looks featured linen burden pants with a braiding belt commutual with affection awning-stripe shirts or a light, apart sweater.
NAUTICA
Nautica launched New York Actualization Week Wednesday morning with a abeyant debate: Will hemlines be a accordant affair to men abutting spring?
Many of the brittle bolt pants were beat aloof aloft the abate and the shorts hit mid-thigh, beneath than Bermudas but best than able-bodied shorts.
Even the one archetypal three-piece suit, done in a fleet pinstripe, had a beneath than boilerplate hem. But what absolutely bent the eye was the linen affiliated collar shirt beat beneath that helped this handsome accouterments alternate a warm-weather accidental attending and business-appropriate refinement.
Dressy apparel were, though, far and few between. Swimsuits bedeviled the accumulating -- the cast name is Nautica, afterwards all -- and those mostly hit the knee like the lath shorts the surfers wear.
But the all-embracing attending actuality was added European sailor than surfer. The colors were American with red, white and dejected and ancestor of chicken and silver, but the adapted striped T-shirts, bright scarves and abridged squares had ability and flamboyance.
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