In loped a model, of the usual model proportions: 17 feet tall, and probably 100 pounds soaking wet. She looked stitched into a pair of sinuous, slightly flared stretch pants. Donna Karan, narrating her "informal formal" presentation, assured her guests that not long before, she'd tried on the very same pair. "When I fit into these pants, I went, oh my God, this is the best thing that ever happened here," Karan crowed. The pants, in seamed spandex, are part of the foundational group of items the designer calls "body pieces," the basis of her Body Forms Resort collection. Beside them, there's a jumpsuit and a jacket, the natural evolution, the designer said, of her famous bodysuits.
These pieces—innerwear gone outerwear, in effect—play up the sporty motif that imbued the entire collection. There were scuba jackets and piecework collage skirts reminiscent of racing gear (they put Karan in mind of her late husband's Ducati-riding outfits). Skintight tops paired with voluminous skirts. There were cocoons, cape coats, and flaring trenches here, too. But the message that read most clearly was the female form and all its curves.
Body-con from the mistress of the drape only sounds like a contradiction. In fact, Karan reminded her audience, drape and corsetry do the same thing: Accentuate the good and hide the not-so-good. That's what the showstopping pair of snow white column gowns will do, underpinned as they are with Karan's "hidden support systems." She knows wherefrom she speaks, being not just the designer, but a customer, too. She'd just worn a similar one—albeit in a vivid fire engine red—to the Met gala.
