Alexis Mabille hit upon an intriguing starting point for his new collection: He was reimagining Rosie the Riveter as a Vargas girl, a kind of pneumatic tomboy pinup. That gave Mabille some depths to plumb, especially given his historic interest in ultra-feminizing masculine signatures. Here, that modus operandi was evidenced in a myriad of slinked-out and/or be-flounced adaptions of workwear, such as the military jumpsuit and the denim dungaree. Some pieces worked better than others; the flounced trenchcoat, in a sheer laminated nylon, was indeed very cool. And the show-opening khaki silk jumpsuit nailed the sex-bomb tomboy inspiration right on the head. Elsewhere, though, there were some head-scratching looks, like the one-shoulder dungaree romper or the crystal-bedazzled rodeo shirts or the atavistic racerback tank tops and dresses. There was a very scrambled take on Americana going on in the collection—a kind of fantasy of hardy American girls—but Mabille never really rose to the occasion of exploring that theme properly. Some of the embellishment looked like decoration for decoration's sake. The simplest looks came off the best: This season's standout for Mabille was a navy gown, almost monastic in its covered-up-ness, with an Empire waist, three demure buttons at the collar, and a jaw-dropping amount of volume in the skirt. The gown wasn't particularly literal to Mabille's theme, but it expressed it, somehow.
