Michael Herz and Graeme Fidler have a lot to work with in the Bally archive: 10,000 shoes and 1,200 illustrations. Lining one wall of their installation today were some of those artworks, including a drawing of a delicate red sandal circa 1951 that the designers used as inspiration for Spring. Herz compared its design to a cat's cradle. The leather laces on its descendants twist, knot, and cross over one another in different variations. Most came in red, but they were also shown in nude and navy.
Leather formed the basis of the ready-to-wear, too, but while the sandals were quite feminine, the clothes for the most part were more streamlined, in keeping with Bally's last Spring collection. The coats came laser-cut with tiny perforations, not just for surface interest, but also to give them an easy-to-wear lightness. The leather dresses—a one-shoulder style in white on top and black on the bottom, and a brown sheath with a twist at the waistline—were both quite good. Of the experiments with embellishment, a pink lace shift will find more fans than a green leather T-shirt embroidered with cracked Plexiglas. The photo print of the Plexi on a knee-length dress fit better with the designers' more minimal vocabulary.
