The prints that opened Michael van der Ham s show were such a clever idea, you almost felt a lightbulb pop up over your own head. The designer had frozen his signature fabric collages as images of torn swatches on smart crepe de chine blouses and scarf-wrap skirts. "I have to build a business," the soft-spoken van der Ham said in explanation.
A print that distills all his ideas means that there s less to "get" and more for women to instinctively want. That great cotton tweed top and dress will surely find their way to a retail rack with little resistance. But if this show was about refinement—see those custom-print Louboutin T-straps—it was also about a return to what made his clothes stand out. After last season s experiment with working his ideas in a single fabric, his multimedia assemblages were a welcome sight.
There are some who might view that reach for elegance as a loss of edge and a dimming of raw creativity, but van der Ham is in his early days and clearly in the process of honing his strategy and approach. Still, count this as a move forward.
