Alberta Ferretti has built her reputation on thinking pretty. Her favorite ways of expressing that are in fragile chiffon party dresses and sweetly-cut princess coats. For fall she does both, but with a hint of the Austro-Hungarian influence that has emerged as one of Milan s propositions for translating spring s folklore feeling into fall clothes.
The Austrian touches turn up in Ferretti s use of loden and brown and in details like the Tyrolean bindings on her signature coats, military frogging decorating the sleeve of a blazer or felt cutouts adorning a duffel. There are precisely-cut peacoats, pants with raised seams and Aran knits which give Ferretti s girl an ample daytime wardrobe. Come nighttime though, she s back to her fairy chiffons which this season are subjected to endless variations of asymmetric cutting with pleats, raw-edged garlands of petals, twisted shoulder straps, ribbon ties and inserts of three-dimensional flower decorations, mostly in black.
