Backstage before his show, Stuart Vevers gamely supplied his buzzwords for the season: joyful, light, colorful. Spring, he explained, began with the palette, one with bright candy tones that couldn t be further from his somber neutrals last season. A reaction to Fall s beige-out? "Yes, we do all feel it as designers," Vevers said. "And the time is just right for it. It s Spring." He added that the brighter pieces the house did for his pre-collection were selling like gangbusters.
You can t really find fault with any of the above reasoning, but on the runway, the look seemed to have overdosed on optimism, skewing very young. This particular brand of youth was a girlish and cheeky-cute sensibility that reminded more than a few present of Miu Miu. There were little color-blocked thigh-high shifts, leather T-shirts dotted with tiny laser-cut flower appliqués, and kitten-heeled pumps covered with more of those floral-shaped leather bits. Most of the high-ponytailed models wore either leather headbands with flat bows or elastics decorated with big leather cubes. Ladylike, structured handbags had flashes of neon trim.
There were grown-up moments to be picked out, like a grass green sweater tucked into an "oro" suede A-line skirt, or a ponyskin coat in a dark leopard print, but it wasn t easy to fully extricate them from the top-to-toe vibe. And the butterfly scarf print—inspired by the house s Madrid archives—could easily go either woman or girl. But on the whole? While this about-face certainly made a strong (and yes, fun) visual statement, the new direction felt jarring.
