This unisex collection felt cleaner and more sartorial looking, with a focus on precisely cut tailoring, including the terrific houndstooth suits.
The setting, with the male and female models emerging through a fine chalky mist, projecting oversize shadows on the venue’s bright white walls, was ethereal.
Even the decorative ethnic touches like the laser-cut sections on shirts and jackets had a sharpness to them. Ditto for the exotic, graphic, golden embroideries on coats and vests that evoked both regal sunbursts and palm leaves.
There was still the designer’s signature flowing layering, the sensual robes and pajama tops, and his intoxicating sense of coloring was intact, with beautiful green and burgundy jewel tones, and a look pairing a saffron yellow jacket with a matching mandarin-collar shirt with a row of tiny buttons and a pant in a contrasting bright yellow. That lent an Indian note, as did the embroidery details highlighting the constructions on garments.
The show’s sensual, elegant styling — think a white jacket tucked into pale gold pants on one of the women’s looks, a matching gold coat in her hand — was also pure Ackermann with the designer confidently building on his universe and the sartorial elegance heightening the ethnic codes.