Day 4:  Erin Featherstone Hearts Birds and Chocolate

Happy Valentine’s day.  My wife took my kids skiing this weekend.  So the only Valentine I got was chocolates and a rose waiting for me at Erin Fetherstone at the end of the day.  Some Japanese fashion Bessie collected a big bunch of the pink roses after the show from all the front row benches.  So smart.

Kids are out of school this week, so a lot of the editors are screwed and have to bring their children to the shows.  Sasha Charnin Morrison, step daughter of famed Vogue sittings editor Jade Charnin, brought her little twin boys.  They fought over the one extra seat. And they were so cute taking pictures of the models at Luca Luca until one of their camera’s broke and then they were fighting about that.  And Luka Orlandi and his wife Oluchi, the supermodel, had their attractive little one with them in the front row.  I guess Luca doesn’t design the show anymore.  It was kind of a shock to see him sitting there with the row of fading supermodels, Carol Alt, Kelly Bensimon, and Alison Brie, from Madmen.

The show was sweet, it looked like clothes from a really tony Euro boutique.  We’re seeing a lot of the sheer material holding up a regular cocktail dress.  And little slices out of the dresses, and especially, a cleanly cut axe chop out under one arm. That is a theme that has repeated over and over in all the shows, and dresses with sweater top attached to sparkling bottom. Luca didn’t do big panchos, and that droopy silhouette, but we saw it everywhere else. Derek Blasberg was wearing one at Luca and someone complimented him on it, and he kind of dissed them, “Really, I’m not so sure about it.” I rode down to Catherine Malandrino with Freddie Leiba, who styles Janet Jackson and Liz Hurley, and he wasn’t so sure that Luca Luca really needs to do a show. But if he’d seen the last ten years of Luca Luca, as I have, he’d know that this was one of the best, most tasteful ones ever.

Malendrino was a presentation at the Chelsea Art Museum.  And the models and buns towering on top of their heads.  The room was crowded like a bus station in India, and the flow didn’t work so well.  But the clothes looked attractive and inventive as always.  CM has a real eye for that Chic French hippy-cool.  Seen a lot of fur this season, Luca and Catherine did that in a serious way. And by the way, Catherine and her husband are two of the very nicest people. The Calvin Klein men’s collection drew some serious cool dudes, Ryan Phillipe and Kellan Lutz, from Twighlt and Calvin Klein underwear fame for two. Kellan said his galpal, has seen his skivvies ad and dug it.  And, after the show, Ryan said he’d consider doing a Calvin add. Uh, hunk. The clothes were sensexsational.  Kellan had on a shiny tie and thin lapelled suit from the collection, but some on the runway had sheer over fabric to give it a shine and there were lapels that had a plastic-esque hipness-factor. Yum.

Herve Leger, too, knocked it out of the park.  One would think that Max Azria continuing the line of a dead designer who mainly did dresses that looked as if they were sewn together out of elastic bandages would suck in a spectacular manner. But strangely enough, Max’s best work derives within the constraints of trying to keep the legend alive. They are super inventive, making the bandages black, or cutting them into triangle shapes, and then sewing them all together.  Or using eyelets on the sides of the dresses, or weaving them together with lacing, the way a shoe ties.  The results were exceedingly happening.  And he, too, hit all the side chop notes, and dark panel thoughts, that have been making the rounds this season.

And the gals in the front row, Alison Brie, Melissa George, Maggie Rizer, Maggie Q, all love the fact that these dresses don’t really require anything under them at all.  They are basically like wearing a girdle (or so I am told).   Brava Azria!  For a very straight guy, he sure can work a skirt. Y-3 took places at the Amory on Park Avenue (uptown).  I chatted with Ciara in the green room, which was actually shrouded in black curtains.  She’d been singing the night before, and her Y-3 thang she was wearing, looked a bit Herve-esque. Generally, I have never been wild about the Y-3 line. But I must say, the use of laser walls on the side of the runway, with just a touch of smoke to make them undulate gave the huge armory space a look. And there was something spot on about the baggy, easy, dark hipster moment Yamamoto captured.  Haiti, a small beautiful happy but poor country has just been pulverized. And Alexander McQueen hung himself.  It just isn’t OKAY to sit and watch adorable sparkly froufrou Euro-pretty little nothings float down the runway.  But Yoji was giving us baggy, economical clothes that would be appropriately somber, but cool even if you were to go pitch in in some disaster.

Oh, and the sneakers were out of this world silver, day glo. They had a real custom feel. And there were platforms and boots.  But one flock of models literally sprinted down the runway in them. And then Yoji himself did a little kick boxing with a couple of models, and it got kooky, and he did lose me for a bit, but ¾ of the show was really spot on.  I mean really, who is buying a big expensive fur just now, and giant sequined ballgown, unless they’re a total A-holes.   Yoji did the pancho thing in a big way, and there was that silhouette where the clothes pancho’d down on both sides.  But he did it in a non-precious way, for everyman and with sneakers.  I only wish the sneaks had had more Velcro (like Sprouce), rather than being lace ups. And of course there were big cut outs under the arms like everybody else. What up with dat!

At the end of the day, I raced down to Milk Studio in time to find the pink rose and a tiny box of Jacques Torres chocolates on my seat. Erin’s show was all about Erin. The hair was cut very much like Erin’s, with the bangs in the front (no kidding, every model).  And the models wore clothes that look a lot like what Erin wears.  Flowing easy shirts and dresses, light silky clothes that seemed to float. And she did bird fabrics and scarves that reminded me not just a little bit, but an awful, awful lot of my brother, the artist, Hunt Slonem’s work.  Ahem.  She hosted a dinner for him a couple of years ago and we gave her a book. I guess this was an, ahem…homage. Flattering, I’m sure.  Really…the dresses and scarfs with birds on them were super adorable cute. Tweet, tweet.

Posted under: Fashion

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 14th, 2010 at 9:08 am. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.