Lara Stone, the famously curvy model and new face of the Calvin Klein campaigns, was all hourglass va-va-voom at the CFDA Awards on Monday night. In her strapless black Calvin dress, she looked sexy and fabulous, but those aren't the sort of adjectives designer Francisco Costa necessarily seeks to elicit on his Collection runway. Architectural and understated are more likely his preferred terms. After exploring geometric volumes in recent collections, Costa seemed to be interested in flattening the planes of the female form here. He stitched vertical seams onto the fronts of boxy yet soft silk cotton jackets and coats that erased the models' waists. Dresses (note the new below-the-knee lengths) came with horizontal tucks and pleats at the midriff, hips, or thighs, but these details purposely had a pressed-down look. In other words, the clothes were subtle in the extreme, and lovely in their quiet, serene way. For anyone hankering for a bit more oomph, a lemon yellow velvet ankle-skimming shift provided a zing of color, and an ivory double-breasted trouser suit delivered a bold bit of straightforward structure.
