"1998 | 2013," A.F. Vandevorst s program notes announced. Perched atop each seat was a tiny box filled with a sugarcoated Belgian chocolate; "Thank you," the words on it read. To celebrate their fifteenth anniversary, An Vandevorst and Filip Arickx took a trip through their archives. "We found the pieces closest to our hearts and redid them in a fresh summer version," Vandevorst said backstage. For crowd members who d been following their career, the show played out as a series of "remember when" flashes. The flat studs that decorated shirtdresses in neat grids were a callback to Fall 2010; the embellished and fringed scarf worn as a top was of a more recent vintage—Spring 2013, to be precise. But this didn t have the feel of a greatest-hits moment.
After a decade and a half in business, the most marked characteristic of the husband-and-wife pair is their storytelling approach to each collection. Tonight s show was no different. For Spring, they imagined their girl on some sort of trip. Whether through the desert or on the beach wasn t clear, but one side of each model s outfit and half of her hairdo were plastered in sand, as if, perhaps, she fell asleep there, or rolled around with a lover. Either way, this was an evocative show. A long jersey wrap dress barely held in place by a grosgrain ribbon had a soigné glamour; same goes for other dresses that were clingy in back and draped asymmetrically from squares of fabric in front. Vandevorst and Arickx have a good sense of their own strengths. The show left you hopeful about their next fifteen years.
