Organic s John Patrick insisted today that his new collection was anything but casual. "Casual, to me, is not what I m interested in or where we re going. I think that it s an overused word. It s almost trying to seduce the customer, like, oh, it s easy. Easy is an adjective for turning on a faucet. I think that our identities are intrinsically hinged on getting dressed, and I think that dressing up is where it s at." His muse for the occasion was the admittedly obscure art writer Edit DeAk, the co-founder of the seventies art zine Art-Rite, on which she collaborated with the likes of Joseph Beuys and Suicide s Alan Vega. "We would be getting her ready, and she would be going to the Interview dinners with Andy," Patrick remembered of his own time with DeAk. "She d just kind of whip it together, but she was dressed."
It was a little hard to square the emphasis on dressing up with the collection on the runway. There was a greater emphasis on tailoring, admittedly, and a bustier dress and a jumpsuit that could easily move from day to night. But there were just as many pieces that seemed to grow out of the long line of Organic collections past: little tees, shorts, cropped sweaters, balloon skirts, shown with flats or (at most) mid-height heels. A skirt and dress embroidered all over with daisies were special standouts, but even they had a sunny, daydream quality you d be surprised to encounter after hours. Dressy or not, it all looked perfectly ready to be whipped together at a moment s notice, DeAk-style. (Hannah Bronfman, a sort of label muse, had, according to Patrick, shown up at 8 a.m. and done just that.) Farther than that, it felt like business as usual, in the most complimentary sense. The shot of the new came courtesy of five men s looks, returning after a long absence to the Organic fold.
