Bursting with confidence: That could describe Michael Kors’s ideal woman, his fall show or, these days, the designer himself. In the past year, Kors has been on a business-building rampage. He sold his company, tripled his staff, moved into a mammoth new office space, and introduced a lower-priced line with multimillion-dollar ambitions.
The collection was rooted in Kors’s favorite luxe materials (cashmere, fluttery silks, fine-gauge knits, suede, and lots and lots of fur) and strong tailoring. As expected, there were classics aplenty—suede jeans, an Aran-knit tank top, dramatic sweeping coats, and perfect little sweaters. But there was also a new friskiness on the runway. Kors jettisoned his usual neutrals for juicy colors like lavender, light blue, coral, and chocolate, and mixed in lots of pieces that require a certain youthful bravura (not to mention great legs) to pull off: fringed suede minis, slippery silk blouses, and clingy jersey dresses with rippling knee-length skirts. He piled on the accessories, too, topping the outfits with hefty belts, tooled-leather bags, floppy felt hats, or a knitted mink scarf in a spun-sugar color. In this kind of mood, Kors certainly isn’t feeling like an early-to-bed guy; he closed the show with a handful of high-glamour evening gowns, including one bronze beaded showstopper that glowed like a bright new day.
