A bulletin board lined with colorful silk ribbon doesn't sound like enough to build a season's worth of clothes on, but it proved plenty inspiring for Narciso Rodriguez. He's a talent who's always been compelled as much by the process of designing as the results; watching his presentation today, you could see how he connected the dots for Resort. In this case, the dots were stripes.
Photographs of the ribbons first became the striped print on the front of a sleeveless silk blouse. Moving on from there, the print morphed into color-block designs on the bodices of strappy dresses, and taking the idea one step further, into the geometric collage of red, black, white, and snake-print jacquard on a fitted sheath. If it sounds conceptual, there was nothing abstract about the end products. Looking at his sexy, body-skimming dresses, you're almost tempted to call Rodriguez results-oriented; they're not the kind of thing for going around unnoticed in.
His bias-cut, lapel-less jackets and slim, tapering pants, by their very nature, are less revealing. They trigger a different kind of desire reflex—the desire for an expertly cut pantsuit that's comfortable and cool in equal degrees.
