Scott Sternberg's dream vacation is a stay at The Lightning Field, Walter De Maria's land art installation in New Mexico. Sternberg's usual aesthetic is brighter and a bit merrier than the Santa Fe scrub, but he married the two in a collection that riffed, in his words, on the area's tropes and clichés. So no plain Navajo print; rather, a rainbow one he dubbed Tetris. On the whole, this collection substituted sleight of hand for loud print. Poplin tops with Frankenstein seams were inspired by Louise Bourgeois' fabric works; others made room for panels of alternating fabric or began as pullovers seemingly soldered to button-front shirts. A varsity sweatshirt turned out to be silky crepe de chine. Pieces like these and raw-hemmed shorts suits brought to mind some of fashion's Japanese provocateurs (ground breaks, by the way, on the label's Tokyo store, its first, this year). Meanwhile, an expanded section of eveningwear, with long plissé skirts and tuxedo blazers, was an homage to Charlotte Rampling. To its credit, the mix worked. It all fits under the evolving rubric of Boy, Sternberg's higher-end women's line. As if to seal the point, he debuted a new BOY monogram, on shirts and knits, to christen it.
