Former Perry Ellis creative director Jerry Kaye flirted with Eurostyle in his collections, but the Waspy-weekend connotations of this show's backdrop—a fence trailing through dunes, the ocean spreading beyond—suggested his successor, John Crocco, was attempting to take the label right back to its American roots. There was certainly a patrician ease to a suede-pocketed tweed jacket or a white cabled roll-neck paired with capacious tweed trousers.
Elsewhere, Crocco toyed with the proportions that have been one of the season's big stories: cropped jackets, a big soft-shouldered pinstripe, a pair of merino long johns for silhouette emphasis. But the soundtrack blaring Cream's "I Feel Free" promised more, and it wasn't always forthcoming. Though there was some textural interest—a dégradé jacquard knit, for instance, or a rough herringbone, which looked cool in a varsity jacket. And Crocco's pinstriped combats and patchworked camel coat came pretty close to capturing Ellis' own unique ability to twist the classics.
