Former Perry Ellis creative director Jerry Kaye flirted with Eurostyle in his collections, but the Waspy-weekend connotations of this show s backdrop—a fence trailing through dunes, the ocean spreading beyond—suggested his successor, John Crocco, was attempting to take the label right back to its American roots. There was certainly a patrician ease to a suede-pocketed tweed jacket or a white cabled roll-neck paired with capacious tweed trousers.
Elsewhere, Crocco toyed with the proportions that have been one of the season s big stories: cropped jackets, a big soft-shouldered pinstripe, a pair of merino long johns for silhouette emphasis. But the soundtrack blaring Cream s "I Feel Free" promised more, and it wasn t always forthcoming. Though there was some textural interest—a dégradé jacquard knit, for instance, or a rough herringbone, which looked cool in a varsity jacket. And Crocco s pinstriped combats and patchworked camel coat came pretty close to capturing Ellis own unique ability to twist the classics.
