Tom Ford has a lot of past to make peace with. He conceded as much following a showroom walk-through of his Fall collection during London fashion week. Perhaps the concession was due to his awareness that the strength of the clothes derived in large part from their echoes of former triumphs. Intense color, erotic edge, sensuous silhouette, sculptural hardware…ah, those good old Gucci glory days. But they’re long gone, and the real success of this collection was that, for all the echoes, it didn’t dwell. Instead, it was Ford’s sharpest elucidation yet of his cinematic vision for women. “Russian spy,” he laughed about the second-skin black leather looks accessorized with knee-length boots and huge shades. A black velvet column with a metal corset belt reminded him of Metropolis. There was some Bond girl in a leather jacket bonded with sheared beaver or a stretch tulle and feather column with sheer detailing, and a hint of noir heroine in a gray flannel suit with a tweed coat thrown over it, the whole outfit actually cut from cashmere. Gwyneth’s Oscar cape and gown, Ford’s own favorite from his collection, was Golden Age of Hollywood artifice at its most glamorously precise.
It was a reminder that Ford’s speciality is the grand, almost theatrical gesture, in fashion at least. (His directorial debut was, by comparison, a delicate chamber piece.) Forget shrinking violet; this time you got chrome yellow and fire engine red, in fuzzy alpaca fur layered over black leather. Snake and crocodile were broken down to their component scales, which were painstakingly applied by hand to stretch jersey to make serpentine tops, dresses, and full-length sheaths. Effortful? Absolutely. But where that effort has been distancing up to this point—making the clothes easy to admire but difficult to like—it felt that, with this collection, Ford managed a critical switcheroo. His clothes used to wear his women. Now he’s got it the right way round.
—Tim Blanks
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Our review will be posted shortly. See the complete collection by clicking the image at left. View full post on Runway Feed
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There’s something insistently cheerful about Gaby Basora’s line Tucker. Basora specializes in eye-popping prints, which she uses in easy-to-wear clothes, typically made from silk, that have a slightly vintage mien. She’s leveraged that design strategy into a pretty booming business, and the psychology of the Tucker clothes has a lot to do with that: Basora makes pieces that, no matter how low a girl is feeling, are keen to paste a smile on her face. Bad breakup? Maybe it’s this season’s track pants in a pastel wallpaper floral that will do the trick. Job got you down? A tea dress in a bright doe print ought to cushion the blow of yet another endless spreadsheet. Rain again? Throw on a robelike coat in a painterly pink and purple print. Etc. Tucker collections are like a closet pep squad.
Do they need to be more than that? Not really. And Basora doesn’t complicate matters by attempting any particularly challenging silhouettes. This season, she emphasized longer lengths and ladylike cuts and detailing. In general, with the exception of a tailored pencil skirt or a sleek silk jumpsuit, she erred—as usual—on the side of clothes that are eminently toss-on-able. Also as usual, she’s done a grab bag of eye-opening prints, ranging from the trendily twee (that pastel floral) to a Marni-esque graphic check. All in all, a typically boisterous outing.
—Maya Singer
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