In 1986, when Alistair Carr was 12 years old and living in Glastonbury, he had a girlfriend who dressed, he recalled, as a combination of skinhead rebel and Nan Kempner chic. She recently contacted him again, and that got Carr thinking about what she'd be like now. (He is still a little trepidatious about making actual physical contact.) So he styled a collection around Miss X. The models had hair tipped in intense color, like a punky dye job grown out. Here was her skinhead bomber jacket in textured red-orange leather, and a twisted twinset, the kind of outfit a small-town girl might adopt as an unwitting homage to big-city style. The box pleats of Miss X's school uniform were duplicated in skirts, jackets, and coats. Maybe she'd had a Princess Diana moment, because there was also a jumper with a piecrust collar, and a dress with a ruffle knit on sleeves and skirt.
This being Pringle, there was a lot of knitwear, from a classic cashmere rollneck (still the company's bread and butter, and looking smart in tandem with matching cashmere pants), to the trompe l'oeil cardigan effects that opened the show, to the chevron-patterned jacquards, which were influenced by the 1980's design group Memphis. Some of the most appealing pieces in the show were fuzzy candy pink and mint angoras lined in merino wool.
Carr toyed with color in a subtle but confident way, attaching a mint faux-astrakhan collar to a camel coat, color-blocking navy and orange in another coat. It was odd enough to successfully complement his inspiration, whomever and wherever she may be. A genius finishing touch was the baked bean cans in silver, created by the jeweler Husam el Odeh to wrap around the heels of Chrissie Morris' shoes. With a pair of those, you'd be living in the love of the un-common people.
