How did Peter Som imagine his girl for Spring? Staggering around the desert, being revived at an oasis, watching the sunset, and then meeting her Moroccan lover, he said in a preshow interview. Hot plot, but Som's not in the business of dressing Harlequin romance heroines, and his focused—if somewhat safe—collection stuck to a story line that his customers and maybe even foundering Blass-ites could relate to.
Though Som described this as a "sexier" season than any he's done before, he is still a romantic at heart. The only real frisson of raciness was provided by the Bruno Frisoni shoes; the clothes, as always (a black-and-white minidress, for instance, or a printed-and-beaded coat at the end of the show), remained appealingly ladylike. Some of the skillful Lawrence of Arabia embellishments might have been a bit literal-minded, but there was a youthful, siroccolike freshness to a rose-colored washed-suede shirtdress or a flowing silk seersucker number—pieces that were essentially all-American.
