You probably know Felipe Oliveira Baptista best as the designer who scored the Lacoste job recently vacated by Christophe Lemaire, who s now at Hermès. Baptista has been showing on both the Paris ready-to-wear and haute couture schedules for a few years, but today s show, piggybacked onto Dries Van Noten s time slot and venue, likely had a healthy population of the fashion-curious.
Appropriately, Baptista s ideas were all about bodies in motion. He seemed to have stripped away some of his conceptual tendencies, for a clean and punchy look that toed the sexy-sporty line. He began with patch-pocket vests and leggings with panels of perforated leather before segueing into more experimental looks with streamlined cutouts and sheer overlays.
Results were mixed. A strange peplum belt-cum-miniskirt strapped over a jacket and bodysuit didn t make sense. But then came a complex look that layered a boxy cutout cropped top with a lightly flared and piped skirt over a tube dress; nutty as it sounds, it played quite coherently in its palette of camel, black, and white. The outfits in the second half of the show also required case-by-case judgment, with their trompe l oeil tuxedo motifs and tailored sherbet-colored organzas. Nevertheless, when Oliveira hit his mark, there was a certain freshly considered, youthful elegance that clued you in to the potential his new bosses have clearly seen.
