"1998 | 2013," A.F. Vandevorst's program notes announced. Perched atop each seat was a tiny box filled with a sugarcoated Belgian chocolate; "Thank you," the words on it read. To celebrate their fifteenth anniversary, An Vandevorst and Filip Arickx took a trip through their archives. "We found the pieces closest to our hearts and redid them in a fresh summer version," Vandevorst said backstage. For crowd members who'd been following their career, the show played out as a series of "remember when" flashes. The flat studs that decorated shirtdresses in neat grids were a callback to Fall 2010; the embellished and fringed scarf worn as a top was of a more recent vintage—Spring 2013, to be precise. But this didn't have the feel of a greatest-hits moment.
After a decade and a half in business, the most marked characteristic of the husband-and-wife pair is their storytelling approach to each collection. Tonight's show was no different. For Spring, they imagined their girl on some sort of trip. Whether through the desert or on the beach wasn't clear, but one side of each model's outfit and half of her hairdo were plastered in sand, as if, perhaps, she fell asleep there, or rolled around with a lover. Either way, this was an evocative show. A long jersey wrap dress barely held in place by a grosgrain ribbon had a soigné glamour; same goes for other dresses that were clingy in back and draped asymmetrically from squares of fabric in front. Vandevorst and Arickx have a good sense of their own strengths. The show left you hopeful about their next fifteen years.
