Cozy. That was the impression you got from Francisco Costa's Calvin Klein Collection show this morning. The first model's double-breasted coat, floor-skimmer of a knit dress, and pony-hair slippers—all in shades of icy gray—made the black-clad, stiletto-wearing audience seriously rethink their looks. And the relaxed vibe didn't stop there. Slipdresses scraped the tops of Birkenstock-style shoes, pale knits were layered and lightly cinched above the waist with ribbon-thin strands of yarn, and a Kashmir-shearling coat in palest lilac looked positively downy.
Safe to say, it felt like a departure for the designer, who sometimes tends to favor dense materials with a lot of innate structure. Recall, if you will, last Fall's felted wools, or Spring's deeply cuffed painter pants. Afterward, Costa, who was headed straight to the airport to catch a flight to Art Basel Miami Beach, said he was looking at the work of the artist Mike Kelley. "It's very homey, very innocent. I think it's nice."
The mood continued into evening, where the propositions included a pair of crepe wool georgette sleeveless dresses with frayed, raw edges (the bordeaux was gorgeous) and a few degradé sequined numbers built on chiffon bases. Come to think of it, any one of them would be just the thing for Art Basel, where the dress code usually reads: relaxed.
