"An elegant anarchist" was Phillip Lim s go-to for Fall. Backstage, his mood board had pictures of glowering rude boys; he mentioned suedeheads, too. Lim has long had a soft spot for those outside the mainstream, and the young punks of sixties Britain were a famously stylish lot. But they made an odd match with the designer s new-and-now sensibility. He has an improvement tic that leads him to tweak just about everything that can be, from fabric to cut to color to process. As a result, many of the finished looks came off fussy and over-styled.
There was likely too much elegance and not enough anarchy. (There was definitely too much eyeliner.) Rudie rudeness wasn t only an aesthetic affectation. There was real anger and unrest behind it, too. You don t have to look back to the sixties to find that kind of energy, either; it s alive and well today, as anyone who lately Occupied Wall Street will vouch. More of that feeling might have strengthened this collection. The toughest pieces were most successful, like thick-soled derby shoes and wool melton coats in a cool print Lim called "digitized houndstooth." Maybe it was, but it looked like a digital camouflage. There s the fighting spirit of the counterculture right there. It was harder to locate in sheer organza undershirts.
