Inspired by the American sculptor Leonardo Drew s moody and textured work, Joaquín Trías was feeling apocalyptic for Fall. However, Trías, a former tennis player turned self-taught designer, has the bouncy enthusiasm of a golden retriever. It s hard to imagine him having a dark day, let alone enough fodder for an end-of-days collection. Perhaps that accounted for the somewhat mixed result.
A big part of the story was a play of textures, as in the double-face Japanese tweed backed with crinkle cotton, which had a nice homey chic. A black foil-printed chiffon with a zebra print, on the other hand, might have seemed like a good idea, but in practice felt a bit girls-night-out cheap. Trías played it off straightforward chiffon in dresses with petal sleeves and waist-exposing cutouts. There was yet more slicing and dicing; Trías, after all, has a hazily architectural ethos. The problem is that it s not always convincing, for instance in the little black dress that came wrapped with a sort of asymmetrical lamé half-shrug.
The buttery black leathers—Trías tapping into his Spanish heritage—were easily the high point, particularly in a pencil skirt with whipstitch detail snaking up the side. But there was nothing you couldn t live without, and nothing you couldn t find elsewhere. Often, TRIAS collections seem to end up between being "just clothes," with little defining purpose or customer, and arty pieces that seem to satisfy their creator s ego more than relate to what women want to wear. Last season, Trías decided to start showing in Paris instead of New York, but without a sharp point of view that decision seems like pure indulgence.
