Designers have been plundering the looks of decades past for a while now; you can even predict when the next wave of sixties mod or fifties wasp waists will wash ashore. A seventies revival was due, and Phillip Lim is one of the designers bringing it about this season. The take at 3.1 Phillip Lim had an intriguing looseness—Lim didn t hew to any one particular reference. Instead, he drew on a mishmash of seventies-esque motifs, and gave them a twist and an update. There was something honest about that method, as though Lim had plucked at loose strands of memory. Take the wave-like hemlines here, magnified versions of that Brady Bunch-tastic rickrack trim. Or consider the flourish of brown suede, the nods to shell suits, or the short A-line skirts and plunge-collar dresses redolent of Jane Fonda looks in Klute. There was also a strong influence from YSL s Safari collection, a reference Lim used in a particularly interesting (and sales-friendly) way. Sand-toned pieces such as a lean belted coat and wide-leg trousers were done in a technical material with a linen-like feel; these pieces conjured the seventies vibe nicely, but they had a very modern weight and structure. The same was true of Lim s jacquards, done in a digitized, magnified snake print. The best thing about this collection, though, was that Lim was working close to the body—the only exceptions, really, being the A-line shifts, the least successful pieces here. A trim pair of trousers with a touch of flare, a flat leather jacket in yellow, a little ruffle-hem minidress in that linen-like technical fabric—these looks, and others, found Lim moving on from his recent obsession with oversizing. How funny that sometimes in order to move forward, you have to look back.
