The punchy minimalism of Ennio Capasa's last collection was clearly well received. (No less than Anna Dello Russo showed up in an Yves Klein-blue suit from it at today's show.) It makes sense that the designer built on the same clean-lined and colorful foundation for Fall. If it ain't broke…
Capasa maintained the exact structure of Spring with its four chromatic groupings, but instead of pure doses of solid color, he set it against black. But that wasn't really the problem. The pairing worked nicely against ivory and lipstick red, but the other two hues in Fall's rainbow were of the wishy-washy, muted sort. That lemony yellow in particular is a color no one's ever dying to wear, particularly when blocked with black.
Backstage, Capasa's inspiration board was covered with images of Twiggy and David Bowie. But while there were Paco Rabanne-esque square paillette shifts and a few Mondrian nods, for the most part he actually went beyond the sixties-era cliché. That included a genuine look to the future. The best idea here was the new technique of thermo-welding three fabrics—a black and color sandwich—to create a single piece of material with the texture and heft of neoprene. When cut into a sharp coat or suit jacket, the material's edges were left unfinished to expose the fabric's inner workings. The resulting soft fringe at the raw edge gave slick pieces a crafty warmth. Capasa called it new couture.
Whatever the term, a detail like that gives you a reason to buy designer over high street. The worst idea was in the very heavy double-folded cut on those Mondrian gowns, best described as what Twiggy would wear at a monastery. In other words, much less than modern.
