“I think for a while, I was so desperate to make people remember what Nina Ricci was, that it was almost two-dimensional,” Harris Reed said the day before his fifth show for the French label. “Lately, I’ve been saying, ‘Ah-ha, I found Nina.’”
So, who is Nina? She is the girl in a 1973 Helmut Newton picture, perched on a car, lit by Paris street lights. Reed discovered the image in a Japanese book and it sat in the center of his mood board this season. It’s a two-o’clock-in-the-morning scene that Reed re-created at four o’clock this afternoon in a blacked-out basement of the Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild.
Nina is also, perhaps, Carine Roitfeld, the ne plus ultra of French-girl style and Reed’s collaborator for the first time this season. “What I love about working with Carine is that now a micro-mini goes with a fabulous oversize faux-fur coat. Shoulder pads are no longer with blazers, they’re inside sheer blouses that go with high-waisted trousers,” Reed said. In other words, putting things together that unexpectedly click. “I love the French word mélange,” he added. “I use it way too much.”
The collection was built from sensuous materials—black satin and lace, jewel toned faux-fur stoles, animal-print velvet, fringe, and horsehair—directly inspired by 1970s nightlife. Rather than statement making cocktail rings and brooches, the jewelry was wrapped and draped: an ellipsis at the end of a sentence rather than an exclamation mark. The result was less operatic than recent seasons past, and more louche, but just as theatrical: Four models posted up at cafe tables on the runway, seducing the audience or possibly each other to the tune of Tweet and Missy Elliot’s “Oops (Oh My).” Even more theatrical, the show closed with two models wearing what could either be called feathered arm cuffs or black angel wings.
What inspired Reed to veer down this particular Newtonian rue? Meeting his customer, for one. From Texas to the Netherlands, he found that the women wearing Nina Ricci wanted “a party ease with a gentleman’s jacket.” Enter Le Smoking, stage right. For Reed, whose pre-Raphaelite tresses stole the show during his bow—Nina Ricci hair care coming soon?—this could be a direction that very well works.
