The birth of a nephew had Brian Reyes thinking about the old world and the new, and the voyage between. So the Colombian-American designer took Ellis Island as the theme for his Resort collection—travel of a somewhat-less-than-resort kind. "It's a girl who brings her roots with her," Reyes said of his muse, and so there were pieces that married European flair with American ingenuity: An Austrian-stripe dress, inspired by the heavy brocaded textiles of the old world, had a detachable skirt. There were times when the story line got in the way of the designs—a dress inspired by a violin, some imagined traveler's prized possession, felt fussy—but when it worked, it worked. There was a well-aged, slightly Mitteleuropa glamour to a lavender culotte suit shown with a cape. Furs, which Reyes first introduced for Fall, had a continental charm, too (and a very New York cut: the T-shirt jacket). Then, the voyage: striped marinière dresses and a leather-accented "seaman's jacket" in double-faced silk crepe. And, at the end of the journey, the print: an image, snapped and then distorted, of oil and water. "The first thing she saw when she arrived," Reyes explained.
