Dandies and swans (of the Black and White Ball swans) — little ambiguity to those muses. “It was a lot about the performative aspects of dressing and taking pleasure in dressing up,” Joseph Altuzarra said during a preview.
In a short time, Altuzarra has proven himself a deft purveyor of sensual polish. For fall he delivered it beautifully, steamy glamour with a touch of gender obfuscation, as if Oscar Wilde crashed the Capote party and Lauren Bacall, all attitude and side-slit skirt, took off with his frock coat.
Altuzarra believes that clothes are a conduit for telegraphing one’s sexuality, and that they must function within the context of a woman’s modern reality; on both counts he’s a disciple of Yves Saint Laurent and Tom Ford, references he used but didn’t abuse. His primary idea for fall sounds simple enough: a curvy, hem-flounced skirt; a great piece of outerwear; plays of texture; a bold, voluminous shot of fur.
The designer kept the interest high throughout, fusing the elements’ bravado and considerable diversity. He opened with a short peacoat with huge fox collar over a whisper-delicate lace blouse and black skirt, side-slit to reveal lace-up boots with a slightly kinky ruffle at the knee. The collar would prove a recurring theme on smart, tailored pieces that dripped urbane chic, but the fur took digressions both girly (pastel pink and blue fox coats) and tough (shearling collar on a leather vest). When it came out from under, the white lace lept from demure to decadent in see-through dresses and as shirt collars attached to exquisite chiffon dresses embroidered with sequins.
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Given such flamboyance, one could skip over the more basic aspects of Altuzarra’s dandy inclinations; but one shouldn’t. His tailoring was distinctive and smart, a bit of dash to the jackets, with lean-cut pants that made the models endless legs look impossibly more so. Dandy indeed.