Something's going on with squiggles and ruffles and frisée-edge frills this season, and one way to diagnose the influence is to point the finger at Zandra Rhodes—Marc Jacobs, for one, has already quoted her. Danielle Scutt certainly appeared to have taken a shine to the odd Zandra-ism when her Amazonian women turned up in a mixture of prints with black wiggle graphics and upstanding chiffon lettuce ruffles outlining the leg-of-mutton sleeves of a few tight-waisted peplum jackets and puffing out the shoulders of a flounce-skirted housecoat. Backstage, though, the designer came up with a different reason for the wavy lines and not-far-off-flamenco ruffles. "It started when I was looking at seventies souvenir postcards with pictures of ladies with flounced polka-dot skirts collaged on in fabric," she shrugged. "Zandra Rhodes was not in it."
True, there were draped tube and flippy skating dresses, too, and other details (strange translucent aprons, for example) that didn't fit the Zandra thesis. Still, in the case of a designer with antennae as finely tuned as Scutt's, trend atmospherics are bound to impinge, if unconsciously. Her collection is an indication of which way a certain strand of fashion is going.
