In 1986, when Alistair Carr was 12 years old and living in Glastonbury, he had a girlfriend who dressed, he recalled, as a combination of skinhead rebel and Nan Kempner chic. She recently contacted him again, and that got Carr thinking about what she d be like now. (He is still a little trepidatious about making actual physical contact.) So he styled a collection around Miss X. The models had hair tipped in intense color, like a punky dye job grown out. Here was her skinhead bomber jacket in textured red-orange leather, and a twisted twinset, the kind of outfit a small-town girl might adopt as an unwitting homage to big-city style. The box pleats of Miss X s school uniform were duplicated in skirts, jackets, and coats. Maybe she d had a Princess Diana moment, because there was also a jumper with a piecrust collar, and a dress with a ruffle knit on sleeves and skirt.
This being Pringle, there was a lot of knitwear, from a classic cashmere rollneck (still the company s bread and butter, and looking smart in tandem with matching cashmere pants), to the trompe l oeil cardigan effects that opened the show, to the chevron-patterned jacquards, which were influenced by the 1980 s design group Memphis. Some of the most appealing pieces in the show were fuzzy candy pink and mint angoras lined in merino wool.
Carr toyed with color in a subtle but confident way, attaching a mint faux-astrakhan collar to a camel coat, color-blocking navy and orange in another coat. It was odd enough to successfully complement his inspiration, whomever and wherever she may be. A genius finishing touch was the baked bean cans in silver, created by the jeweler Husam el Odeh to wrap around the heels of Chrissie Morris shoes. With a pair of those, you d be living in the love of the un-common people.
