Guests perched on Victorian couches and mismatched chairs at the Salmagundi Art Club, in a landmark brownstone on Manhattan s Golden Mile. It was the perfect setting for Comey s quirky, print-heavy, forties-inflected collection. Print motifs on fun and wearable dresses, she said, were informed by a recent reading of a Houdini biography—one of the looks was even called Presto. "I m into easy," Comey said. And so blouses were worn under twisted, vintage-y suits with elbow or three-quarter sleeves, and accessorized with little white anklets and platforms hand-painted with book titles like Séance on a Wet Afternoon (which indeed it turned out to be). Quilting, intarsia knits, and fur-look baby alpaca—made from animals that died of natural causes, the program insisted!—added texture and a wink of humor. While Comey s "off" color schemes and mad, Grey Gardens mixes of print and pattern worked well, the styling was, perhaps, less than original. Still, there was charm here.
