Go Navajo. That was the message from Isabel Marant, who shifted her focus from last season's California surfers to Native Americans on the runway today. Hey, as they say, it's the land of opportunity. Marant may be French to the bone, but she's embraced of late the kind of sportswear we're known for stateside: jeans, sweaters, sweatshirts. Season to season, she just shakes up the surface treatments. Given her reference point, we're talking about printed and real feathers and miles and miles of fringe for Fall. "And because wherever Indians are, cowboys aren't far behind," she joked backstage, "there's lots of denim."
That denim came in the form of patchwork button-downs and vests and dark-washed oversize jackets that read more gangsta than cowboy, but it's the white jeans with the red and black Navajo embroidery that could be contenders in the season's It item sweepstakes (the satin baseball jackets from Marant's Spring collection have that honor this week in Paris). The news on the runway included masculine overcoats made from a dense blanketlike wool, and she gave shearling a hip edge by treating it as a practical layering piece under hardworking parkas.
Ultimately, though, too much here read costumey—see the suede dresses at the end of the show—even if Marant probably has a hit on her hands with those fringed wedge-heel boots.
