As sure as night follows day, the Hitchcock blond will rear her perfectly coiffed head at least once a season. In fact, it was that very thing—night following day—that drew Justin Thornton and Thea Bregazzi to Hitchcock's ultimate blond Tippi Hedren as the muse for Preen's Pre-Fall. Hedren's peerless dawn-to-dusk chic was apparently the wellspring of a collection which seemed to trade more on the depths of her glacially still waters than on the tailored brevity of her look. Hedren was pencil skirts, Preen was full-skirted dresses to the floor, like a ballerina. They were, however, printed with darkly beating bird wings, which evoked Hedren's avian hell in Hitchcock's The Birds.
But maybe a more appropriate reference was Marnie, where Hedren went schizo, because the Preen collection had a truly split personality. On one hand, vintage multibuttoned granny dresses in lacy georgette, on the other, an orange-lined MA jacket gone parka-long, with a huge detachable shearling collar and, on the back, an elaborate rocker embroidery proclaiming Seize the Day. The principle of opposites attracting is a Preen standby, but it's never been quite this graphic. And running with that notion, there was a lot more: a pristine white shirtdress, for example, sharing lookbook real estate with an orange sheath whose dévoré pixelated into tarty leopard, or a man-styled navy suit bisected by an orange zipper. Preen is clearly embracing all sorts of worlds right now with the launch of sexy swimwear for the minxes and Mini Preen for the mites.
