Resort 2013 marks the final women's collection Alistair Carr will design for Pringle. He'll be missed: As this collection reaffirmed, Carr brought a clean, modern sensibility to Pringle. Though he always treated the house's signatures with respect, he came at them from unexpected angles. To wit, this season found Carr exploring, yet again, the traditional Pringle argyle, which he reinterpreted via knits with diamond-shaped cutouts, and the hoary Pringle twinset, here cleverly updated in matched prints and intarsia knits. Carr's best innovations, though, may have been his materials. This season, for instance, he showed pieces in color-blocked, pearlized leather that were instantly redolent of his stated Palm Springs inspiration, and a lightweight denim woven, in fact, from wool. Elsewhere, the painted print and sport-inspired graphic pieces gave the collection some additional pop. Carr noted that he already knew he'd be leaving Pringle when he set out to design these clothes, and that his mind had already skipped ahead to his post-Pringle vacation. That may account for the genuinely easy feeling of the collection. Alas for Carr, but happily for his fans, his imagined vacation is unlikely to materialize insofar as the fashion headhunters are already nipping at his heels.
