The Etro woman is known for her wanderlust. For spring, she sojourned through the Pacific Coast region, starting in fun-in-the-sun, sports-minded California, continuing on through “postcard perfect” Hawaii and finishing in history-and-denim-rich Japan. It was a busy trip.
Backstage before her show, called “Pacific Zen,” Veronica Etro said she sought to imbue her intrepid traveler with “this balance between the mindfulness, the spiritual and the more physical thing, as if she’s balancing the two.”
“The more physical thing” — got it. These days, fashion hearts sports, and Etro punctuated her interest there by casting two real-life surfer girls: world top-10 ranked Victoria Vergara and Maribel Koucke — both gorgeous; Vergara a brand ambassador for Reef. But telegraphing spiritually via clothes? Fashion convention swings if not toward full-on monasticism, then at least visual calm, which on this journey was in short supply.
Much else was going on in a lineup in which specific points of inspiration blurred; Etro noted that a rendering of a Hawaiian tropical sunset might look like a Japanese landscape, or Matisse-inspired cutouts could in fact be Asian calligraphy. These motifs worked in concert with ikats, florals, bandana prints and the house paisleys, all in a broad-based palette infused with more bold and saturated tones than Etro typically shows — yellows, oranges, reds.
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Etro worked those patterns into a lineup that was as diverse as it gets: relaxed tailoring, floaty dresses, Hawaiian-shirt pajamas, quilted kimonos, caftans, pictorial sweaters. It was styled into flamboyant warm-weather pilings, some looks a head-to-toe of one intense motif, such as a big floppy hat over a long slipdress, both in an exploded red-based paisley. And there were countless pastiches of fabrics and patterns: striped mélange cardigan over floral bandeau and patchwork jeans; kimono over pajamas in contrasting black-and-white prints. Some items featured their own pattern mixes too plentiful to count in a single runway walk. A two-in-one example, the show opener, which paired a multipatterned-and-textured poncho-blanket affair over a multipatterned long dress.
For all the diversity of silhouette, a sense of ease carried through in the proportions — nothing restrictive here. Many of the pieces beautifully expressed a languid optimism, and ultimately, there were plenty of appealing clothes to wear. But ease is more that a physical state; it’s also a state of mind. Despite the intended casual attitude, with so much going on, Etro’s runway turned a bit frenetic. Her Pacific Zen would have benefited from interludes that were more, well, pacific.