If the celebrity crush was a little crushier and the furs on the runway a little fluffier at Michael Kors this morning, there was a good reason. The designer is marking his 30th year in business. Yes, he started young—at 19, in fact. Tonight, he'll celebrate in the tony confines of Bemelmans Bar at the Carlyle, where it's a good bet that some of the boldfacers in the front row—Michael Douglas, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Bette Midler, Anjelica Huston, and Debra Messing, for starters—will turn up. Next month, no less a figure than the American ambassador to France will welcome him to Paris, with a festive dinner. Kors is opening a store there on Rue Saint-Honoré, and they're putting the finishing touches on a renovated Madison Avenue flagship as we speak. In other words, the designer is having a pretty good birthday year.
But we're here to talk about the clothes. You wouldn't be wrong if you called this a greatest-hits collection. Over his career, Kors has ridden double-face cashmere, slinky silk jersey, the aforementioned fox fur, and evening crystals straight to number one, and they were all in abundance today. His MO this time around: playing luxe tailoring against languid draping. For every clean charcoal flannel jacket and straight-leg trouser, there was a clingy cocktail dress or gown. He's loving a tunic for Fall, but they shared the runway with bodysuits. The operative word here was sleek; even the furs were knitted to eliminate some of their inherent bulk. The prettiest came in soft shades of plum and mauve, layered over matching draped jersey tops and pajama pants. Nearly every look in the show was monochrome, the better to create that long, uninterrupted line Kors favors.
For the guys, there were luxe takes on wardrobe essentials, too, like leather reefers, tissue-weight knits, and trousers in stretch gab. But the boys couldn't help fading into the background a bit with all the crystal-studded evening numbers Kors offered, the last one modeled to sultry effect by his favorite model, Carmen Kass, in his favorite color, suntan.
If you want relaxed but unalloyed glamour, this collection proved that 30 years on, Kors is still the man to give it to you.
