Charting the careers of young fashion talents, we've come to observe a phenomenon we'll call the click moment. It's when an up-and-coming designer figures out how to get out of his own head and get into the head of his customers. Damir Doma had his click moment today. In the past, his collections have suffered from a persistent dreaminess. Last season, for example, he looked back to the Renaissance for ideas. For Spring, as he said backstage, he wanted to be "more clear in message." It was no struggle to picture these clothes in his newly opened shop on the Rue du Faubourg Saint-Honoré, and we're confident there were plenty of women in the crowd who'd like to see some of these pieces in their closets.
The medium of Doma's message was collage, a trend that's gotten a lot of play on this month's runways. Doma combined military-issue olive drab, quilted black leather, and marled gray fleece for a boxy cropped jacket and paired it with baggy silk pants. If it looked like he'd absorbed some recent Balenciaga-isms at times, a sleeveless, zip-front shift that combined military green cotton, blue silk, and black leather with a wide red-brown belt was a hit entirely his own. We'll go ahead and call it an underdog contender for day dress of the season. Tailored pantsuits, meanwhile, were cut from leather in front and textural jacquard in back. Sometimes such combos can feel forced; here they just clicked.
