Backstage at Guy Laroche, creative director Marcel Marongiu named Claire McCardell as this season s starting point. In a way, it seemed funny to hear him cite a designer other than the one whose name fronts the house he works for—especially when he likely has access to a treasure trove of source material. But to view the collection as a total statement, not the sum of its parts, is to better appreciate how Marongiu considered the freshness of McCardell s daywear back in the 50s. For Spring he was trying to provoke a similar feeling, rather than channel her designs.
Marongiu opened the show with a grouping of leather color-blocked minidresses and continued with slim-line navy overalls made feminine with the addition of bikini tops or bare backs. The languid ribbed knits expressed Marongiu s word of the day, "freedom," as did the maxi slipdresses covered in kinetic geometric prints. For textural contrast, he deftly played with a crosshatched leather and an exclusive Malhia Kent Lurex-and-raffia tweed. After that, the cocktail dresses paneled with amorphous Plexiglas pieces seemed extraneous, mostly because they felt neither of McCardell s day nor ours.
Yet Marongiu eventually revealed two additional inspirations: The oversize buttons on the well-tailored jackets were a nod to his grandfather, a general in the Swedish army; and the tweed s blue-and-yellow mix, which conjured the palette of Starry Night, again riffed on the designer s Swedish roots. "The collection is actually an homage to my mother because she used to dress in a quirky way," said Marongiu. "And I owe her a lot." Now isn t that the worthiest starting point of all?
