While snowstorms and bitter temperatures persist in both Europe and America, coming up with a lot of warm, high-collared, zippered-up jackets and coats was a smart move for Antonio Berardi. "With the weather we've been having this winter," he said, "buyers are in that mind frame." Not that his pieces look so bundled up: more a streamlined, slightly sporty system of layered, modern city tailoring. "I kind of based it on how a man would wear a three-piece suit, with a coat on top," Berardi said, pointing out trompe l'oeil vests attached to the inside of jackets.
The collection's hit dress is a form-fitting hourglass with "bump" shoulders and a curved asymmetrical neckline with a zipper running around it, a shape he's turned out in white, fuchsia, and tweed as well as gray. "People are responding to the fact that, depending on the fabric, this is office-to-evening," he said. His additions of cropped leggings and Mongolian lamb gauntlets skew the look in an edgy direction, but, stripped down to its elements, this is a line with potentially wide cross-generational reach.
