A good Peter Som collection tends to find the designer waging a battle, through clothes, between his instinct for buttoned-up-ness and his palpable desire to let a freak flag fly. That tension was very plain on the Som runway today—indeed, you could even say it was the collection s overarching theme. As Som explained after the show, his silhouettes charted a progression from the structured look of the early sixties to the free-floating bohemian style of the seventies. There were strong pieces at both ends of that spectrum: a leather A-line miniskirt in two soft tones of orange, a broad-collared leopard-print pony-skin coat, the series of diaphanous floral print dresses and gowns that closed the show. The heart of the collection, though, was in Som s blurred prints—"roses, with some mystery," as he described them. A blocked dress of black and gray and construction cone orange that featured the print was a knockout—it really captured the collection s spirit, of a person testing the experience of dropping the reins and hitting the gas pedal.
