Stella McCartney rode into town a victor. She's coming off a banner year, where there was barely a red carpet without one of her polka-dot Spring dresses on it (she has a British Fashion Council Red Carpet Award to prove it). Now she's embarking upon what looks to be another good stretch—beginning with the opening of her even larger Soho store. After her pre-fall presentation, McCartney held a dinner at her new digs.
But before that, she had a crush of friends and fans at the West Village restaurant One If By Land, Two If By Sea, where models played pool and taught each other Scrabble while posing in the designer's new collection. They were upstairs, downstairs, in the garden—about as many stations, it turned out, as stories in the collection. Stella counted six. Listing them would be tedious, and antithetical to the go-forth-and-shop spirit of the thing. Suffice it to say that the dominant interplay was between city (as exemplified by sharp tailoring, like three-button blazers with an especially high button stance, oxford shirting, and tie pins) and country (equestrienne staples like riding pants done Stella's way, cut high and tight). Rough and tumble in the stables as some pieces might have been—an organic cotton fleece jacket, say, or a buffalo plaid blanket coat—they found their equal and opposite in stylized, couture-referencing details elsewhere, like the rounded cape sleeves of a creamy evening coat.
