Seasonal themes tend to loom pretty large in the world of Alice + Olivia. For Resort, Stacey Bendet envisioned a bohemian intellectual, trekking around the globe and no doubt picking up a few sweet little pieces at the souks and flea markets along the way. So how best to translate those in an appropriately playful way for A+O s youthful contemporary customer? Bendet began with a punchy palette of reds, blues, soft yellow, and mint. "Where s Stacey?" intarsia knits depicted the designer in cartoon form at work in, say, the sample room, while elsewhere a menagerie of jungle critters made their way around the hem of a khaki circle skirt. If the latter sounds a touch twee, Bendet s handling of the season s précis elsewhere tempered it. She whipped psychedelic culture s ubiquitous mirrored vests into a polished, cream-colored shorts suit, turned out a delicately studded suede A-line skirt, and revisited the slim-legged flares that were one of her earliest successes. Overall, there was a nice, evenhanded mix of seasonal buys here (printed tie-neck blouses) and the kind of pieces Alice + Olivia s customer can lean on for years to come (a peppy red peacoat).
