Before his show today, Roland Mouret was talking about his expanding team. It's no longer just the designer working solo in his atelier. He's got young people around him now, and, he reports, they're pushing him to consider new things. That came through in his Fall collection, which looked familiar enough—the folds at the neckline, the nips and tucks at the waist—but had a fresh spirit, thanks to his decision to move away from the pencil skirts he's loved for and give something more away from the body a try.
"How do you make an A-line skirt sexy?" Mouret asked backstage. The answer was on the runway, in the ease with which the models moved in inverted-pleat skirts, their bare legs punctuated by ankle boots with zips that reached almost to their toes. Many of the dresses were sleeveless or had fitted, strappy bodices that exposed sheer, textured knits underneath, compounding the sporty sensibility of the collection. A cropped moto jacket in a patchwork of glossy, earth-toned leather was another new experiment, and a successful one. A paneled skirt in the same material looked like a good fit for the designer's new Manhattan store; it had an edge that will appeal to the New York girl. Mouret has always had a wicked color sense. Here, he paired a bright coral-y orange with bordeaux on the lozenge-like graphics of a long, narrow dress; it shouldn't have worked, but it did.
