The punchy minimalism of Ennio Capasa s last collection was clearly well received. (No less than Anna Dello Russo showed up in an Yves Klein-blue suit from it at today s show.) It makes sense that the designer built on the same clean-lined and colorful foundation for Fall. If it ain t broke…
Capasa maintained the exact structure of Spring with its four chromatic groupings, but instead of pure doses of solid color, he set it against black. But that wasn t really the problem. The pairing worked nicely against ivory and lipstick red, but the other two hues in Fall s rainbow were of the wishy-washy, muted sort. That lemony yellow in particular is a color no one s ever dying to wear, particularly when blocked with black.
Backstage, Capasa s inspiration board was covered with images of Twiggy and David Bowie. But while there were Paco Rabanne-esque square paillette shifts and a few Mondrian nods, for the most part he actually went beyond the sixties-era cliché. That included a genuine look to the future. The best idea here was the new technique of thermo-welding three fabrics—a black and color sandwich—to create a single piece of material with the texture and heft of neoprene. When cut into a sharp coat or suit jacket, the material s edges were left unfinished to expose the fabric s inner workings. The resulting soft fringe at the raw edge gave slick pieces a crafty warmth. Capasa called it new couture.
Whatever the term, a detail like that gives you a reason to buy designer over high street. The worst idea was in the very heavy double-folded cut on those Mondrian gowns, best described as what Twiggy would wear at a monastery. In other words, much less than modern.
