"Where were the coats?" an editor asked as Behnaz Sarafpour's audience filed out of Splashlight Studios on, as fate would have it, a balmy afternoon. It's hot in the desert, which flashed by on a video projection at the end of the runway, but not in New York, not in the winter—the season for which the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalist was ostensibly designing.
Sarafpour's Arabian sojourn did encompass a few good-looking coats, including a shearling, an exploded houndstooth, and a black style (which would have been stronger minus the white furniture tassels), but on the whole, the collection failed to hit its mark. There were smart cloqué jackets and on-the-money full skirts (some with coin embellishments in keeping with the Bedouin theme), but pants—the kind working women can wear to the office—were also missing. The designer's cropped versions, cutely paired with the babouches models wore on their feet, were skewed a little young.
Party time, however, was a different story. One black velvet dress with satin straps was exquisitely hand painted, and the show ended on a high note, with a metallic blue ombré one-shoulder coin gown.
