The anniversary trend continues apace. This season, Calvin celebrates 40 years in business, DKNY 20, and Tuleh 10. For an independent brand like Bryan Bradley s—he actually just sold a 49 percent stake in his company earlier this summer—surviving a decade is no small achievement. And the collection he showed in Martha Stewart s West 26th Street offices, which reprised some of his greatest hits and that never felt like a rehash, was a living demonstration of how he did it. In a word, consistency.
Fashion has swung back and forth a few times since Bradley began making quirky-pretty dresses for the social set, but the designer hasn t wavered. In tonight s lineup, there were pretty-pretty nipped-waist sheaths, the best in a beaded floral lace; jacquard suits with lantern-sleeve jackets and the narrowest of pencil skirts; and shirred chiffon dresses that demonstrated Bradley s zany taste in mismatched prints (devotees will recognize some of the fabrics from past collections). One of the show s highlights was a thirties siren gown in a black-and-white floral chiffon just sheer enough to reveal the cheeky polka-dot print beneath—and just the thing to woo back any of those followers, who, like that ceaseless fashion pendulum, may have temporarily gone in a different direction.
