Backstage before his show, Stuart Vevers gamely supplied his buzzwords for the season: joyful, light, colorful. Spring, he explained, began with the palette, one with bright candy tones that couldn't be further from his somber neutrals last season. A reaction to Fall's beige-out? "Yes, we do all feel it as designers," Vevers said. "And the time is just right for it. It's Spring." He added that the brighter pieces the house did for his pre-collection were selling like gangbusters.
You can't really find fault with any of the above reasoning, but on the runway, the look seemed to have overdosed on optimism, skewing very young. This particular brand of youth was a girlish and cheeky-cute sensibility that reminded more than a few present of Miu Miu. There were little color-blocked thigh-high shifts, leather T-shirts dotted with tiny laser-cut flower appliqués, and kitten-heeled pumps covered with more of those floral-shaped leather bits. Most of the high-ponytailed models wore either leather headbands with flat bows or elastics decorated with big leather cubes. Ladylike, structured handbags had flashes of neon trim.
There were grown-up moments to be picked out, like a grass green sweater tucked into an "oro" suede A-line skirt, or a ponyskin coat in a dark leopard print, but it wasn't easy to fully extricate them from the top-to-toe vibe. And the butterfly scarf print—inspired by the house's Madrid archives—could easily go either woman or girl. But on the whole? While this about-face certainly made a strong (and yes, fun) visual statement, the new direction felt jarring.
