Ports 1961 is a world traveler s brand, from its hemisphere-hopping influences right down to its logo, a globe. So it was a surprise when yesterday s Resort show opened with a raspy incantation: "New York is the thing that formed me; New York is the thing that deformed me…"
That was the voice of Patti Smith, the seemingly inexhaustible icon, on the soundtrack. Ports Tia Cibani screened Steven Sebring s Smith doc, Dream of Life, alongside her models, and took the punk poetess as her muse. Signature Patti items, like the necktie and white men s shirt from Mapplethorpe s portrait of the artist on Horses, came in for revision. (The white shirt, for example, became a boxy, cropped blouse, asymmetric lapels flapping.) But the homage was best at its least literal. Billowing T-shirt dresses in satin and silk jersey had a relaxed elegance; a paneled geometric dress cut a fluid silhouette more Ports than Patti, per se. As for punk rock pieces like legging-tight coated jeans snaked with studlike metal snaps? Hard as we try, we can t picture Cibani s customer on a night out at CBGB s.
