“It’s a departure,” Joseph Altuzarra announced before his show. “I thought of the last couple of years as being an exploration of a kind of escapist world, one that crescendoed last season with all these swirling colors, and I liked the idea of going back to something that felt a little more vulnerable, a little rawer, and a little closer to life.”
Rosemary’s Baby was a reference point. He had a copy of the 50th anniversary edition of the Ira Levin book placed on every guest seat, but it was the Roman Polanski movie that he quoted. Nine years ago, for spring 2015, Altuzarra was looking at the same film, but its haunting undercurrents felt much closer to the surface this season, what with tulle veils and matching 1960s babydoll dresses and the she’s-come-undone details, like the crushed textures of everything from slipdresses to A-line coats, gauzy organza slips peeking out from underneath the hems of pencil skirts, and the DIY-ish embroideries on other skirts and dresses.
Mia Farrow’s Rosemary Woodhouse was the stated muse, but Miuccia Prada presided over the proceedings. Prada practically invented the unhinged bourgeois, on the runway at least, and this collection nodded at both her recent outing and more archival ones. It’s been a week of ’90s references, with other designers looking at Helmut Lang and Calvin Klein. They are, at root, competing visions: cool minimalism on the one hand, and twisted conservatism on the other. But if either can persuade women to move on from the played-out provocations of edgy and sexual, it will be a victory.
To tempt them, Altuzarra had satin coats in red, butter yellow, and ivory that were A-line and somewhat oversized, “almost as if you took a doll coat from the ’60s and blew it up a little bit,” and a strapless polka dot trapeze dress straight out of 1950s couture. There was also a pair of gowns, one black with thin straps, and the other a white tank style, that looked neither twisted, nor bourgeois; they were simply striking.
