Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Oscar de la Renta NYFW fall 2017



Here’s the recurring conundrum in the world of fashion: how does a new designer for a heritage brand retain and incorporate the DNA of the brand without looking like a rehash or just completely ignoring its archive? We see it every season and yet there are so few who can successfully meld the old and the new. One of the major issues sits with the viewer who has a long fashion history and even wider breadth of fashion knowledge who can actually speak to the topic at hand.
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Case in point;  Oscar de la Renta Fall 2017 which is now designed by Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia who followed the Monse duo, who followed Peter Copping who followed the eponymous designer. Oscar had signature style, silhouettes, mood, flamboyance, chic, soigne and a very loyal clientele. Again the question arises of how to proceed when succession is in place and what direction will the collection take with each new grand poobah of design. Mr. Copping started out with best foot forward and eventually morphed into less of an Oscar client and more of a quirky Peter Copping client. Next up were a couple of collections designed by the team from Monse which, to me was almost laughable if not unthinkable from the get go.
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Kim and Garcia seem to have taken the step of incorporating the old and the new with few missteps. On the whole the collection was polished clean and contained lots of the ODLR esthetic. When the new designers erred it was with shapes that appeared to be a little to volumetric, if you will, and then there was this overriding sense of restraint and minimalism. Oscar was never about minimal in any sense; in the course of time, there were few prints, embroideries, colors and silhouettes that passed him by. Maybe the best way to say it is that Oscar always retained and channeled his Latin heritage and it manifested itself in shapes, colors and overall mood. BUT I digress., it was a beautiful collection just not exciting and if I had to find one negative it would have been the ode to trend which came via the oversized sloping black sweater… an unfortunate choice for  a collection of this stature.
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