He'll take Manhattan. L.A.-based though he may be, Boy's Scott Sternberg turned his thoughts to the east for a cooler-weather collection. He was thinking of the island nation of New York as seen through Woody Allen's lens, from his 1979 classic Manhattan, starring Diane Keaton. "I was re-watching Manhattan for, like, the 15th time, and that way of dressing that you see in Diane Keaton's character—corduroy suits, button-ups, a certain type of plaid, a high neck—just seemed really fresh, or close to it," Sternberg said. "Certainly in need of an update, but the nice start of an idea about dressing for the fall."
Keaton's persnickety, snobbish Mary in Manhattan is a self-styled intellectual, and the collection's edge came from Sternberg's usual borrowing from menswear, revamped for girls: here, collegiate cord blazers, shown with matching miniskirts or seventies flares, and a camel coat that might be professorial but for its sloping shoulders and softened lapels. The peplum blouses and pleated skirts in schoolmarm plaid might have looked uptight—and would have been, but for the uneven handkerchief hem and raw, scrabbly edge, delivered like a punchline at the end.
There's a funhouse-mirror quality to Sternberg's transformations, like the navyman's peacoat—a vintage staple—that becomes, in his hands, a bubbly kind of opera cloak, with one giant anchor button. Self-seriousness, in other words, is not on the table. In its place, he subs humor. (Keaton, fussy Mary aside, does too.) So among the offerings there was a ladybug print borrowed from a forties archival piece on a day dress and a boiler suit, and a cropped knit sweater—all girl—emblazoned with one giant word: Boy.
