Alberta Ferretti has built her reputation on thinking pretty. Her favorite ways of expressing that are in fragile chiffon party dresses and sweetly-cut princess coats. For fall she does both, but with a hint of the Austro-Hungarian influence that has emerged as one of Milan's propositions for translating spring's folklore feeling into fall clothes.
The Austrian touches turn up in Ferretti's use of loden and brown and in details like the Tyrolean bindings on her signature coats, military frogging decorating the sleeve of a blazer or felt cutouts adorning a duffel. There are precisely-cut peacoats, pants with raised seams and Aran knits which give Ferretti's girl an ample daytime wardrobe. Come nighttime though, she's back to her fairy chiffons which this season are subjected to endless variations of asymmetric cutting with pleats, raw-edged garlands of petals, twisted shoulder straps, ribbon ties and inserts of three-dimensional flower decorations, mostly in black.
