Christopher Kane took a pragmatic, cheeringly un-precious approach to his new Resort collection. "The buyers are drawn to what we did," he said at his Paris presentation. Emphasis on the past tense. But the oldies were still the goodies: fabulous little crepe dresses with panels of knife-edge pleats, fashion details like safety buckles and belt clips, the slightly sickly baby blues and pinks, the cracked leathers, even the pool slides from last summer. And never forget the Versace-referent chain mail, with which the Kane story began so spectacularly in 2004, with his graduate show at Central Saint Martins.
Kane delved even further into his own back pages with a section based on antique photos, which he bastardized with punky splashes of pink. "It felt good to do prints again," he said. "Good not to be so technical." The result had the slightly skewed whiff of perversity that adds magnetic appeal to almost everything Kane does. But he said a flat "no" to the suggestion that the same weird whiff might be hanging around the new-looking fluffy knits. Sister Tammy, majordomo, sounding board, and everything else to Kane Inc., has just had a baby, and her kid brother was feeling broody.
