The very first season I went to New York, no show hit me quite like that of Oscar de la Renta: so WASP-ily rich, such privileged polish, so conservatively hot! While that particular collection was like walking into an episode of Dynasty, it was also impressive to think that the tall patrician fellow who was perfectly affable and approachable had dressed so many earlier-vintage totemic American women, including Vogue alum Babe Paley, Lee Radziwill, C.Z. Guest et al. Fast forward to tonight, where Massimo Giorgetti considered a similar woman but through a lens curved by fantasy over experience. “It all started with the Swans,” he said backstage. “This season it kind of had to. However the women I am imagining today are not those original figures, but their daughters who steal the wardrobe.”
The result was a collection in which Giorgetti worked the stately codes established by designers such as De la Renta in order to wrench them into a new context: granny takes a trip. Chic black day-suiting was disrupted with zippers and lacquered studs. Tweedy-looking bar jackets were given double lapels and fastened with more zippers, this time fluoro trimmed. Short, punkily cut brocade dresses were hung from the body by oversized faux-pearl chokers. It has to be said that certain pieces—especially the three overcoats in camel cashmere, white faux fur, and lace-sleeved moss green wool or the two blurred rose silk T-shirt cocktail dresses—did not seem so radically different from Giorgetti’s starting point. However, deft styling and moody modeling ensured that his Swans-gone-wrong target vibe was never entirely missed.
The designer had an interesting take on how the looks he was shaping might encapsulate a form of revenge dressing, saying: “The thing is that the current generation harbors a little bit of anger against the generations before them. But at the same time they also carry a form of nostalgia: both for the past, and even for a kind of imagined future.” The silk dresses and pants painted with the blurry recollections of lavish soirees past by Bruges-born artist Jan De Vliegher contributed to the push and pull between spurning the past and yearning for it. A further subtext was that this 15 year-old label was possibly in some form confronting its own maturity while exploiting the deniability clause of seditious pastiche. Yet there were pieces here you could imagine even De la Renta himself arching an admiring eyebrow at.
