"Where were the coats?" an editor asked as Behnaz Sarafpour s audience filed out of Splashlight Studios on, as fate would have it, a balmy afternoon. It s hot in the desert, which flashed by on a video projection at the end of the runway, but not in New York, not in the winter—the season for which the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalist was ostensibly designing.
Sarafpour s Arabian sojourn did encompass a few good-looking coats, including a shearling, an exploded houndstooth, and a black style (which would have been stronger minus the white furniture tassels), but on the whole, the collection failed to hit its mark. There were smart cloqué jackets and on-the-money full skirts (some with coin embellishments in keeping with the Bedouin theme), but pants—the kind working women can wear to the office—were also missing. The designer s cropped versions, cutely paired with the babouches models wore on their feet, were skewed a little young.
Party time, however, was a different story. One black velvet dress with satin straps was exquisitely hand painted, and the show ended on a high note, with a metallic blue ombré one-shoulder coin gown.
