This far into the season, shopping lists have started to take shape. Knit dressing, seriously roomy pants, and a military something or other are developing stories. All of them made appearances on Stella McCartney's runway this morning, but she has a knack for making that fact look like happenstance. McCartney is a striver—as a mother of four with an international, multimillion-dollar business, doesn't she have to be? Yet she injects her clothes with an offhand sense of ease. Life's not a breeze, she knows, but dressing for it should be.
McCartney has situated her brand at the profitable place where directional and functional meet. Hip-slung sailor pants were cut extra-wide, but not so big you'd trip over your feet. A ribbed knit tunic and calf-length skirt in a gorgeous shade of indigo followed the lines of the body without clinging. They were more graceful than a sweaterdress with cutouts on either side of the waist, and sexier for their subtlety. Most relaxed of all were the parachute silk flight suits and the matching sweeping coats, like slipping into a pair of pastel pajamas and a robe, and staying that way all day. A tempting thought on Day 26 (give or take) of fashion month.
Models were unfettered by bags. There were just a handful on the runway, and you got the sense that McCartney would've edited them out altogether if she could've gotten away with it. The effortlessness and fluidity of that notion extended into her evening pieces: not just slipdresses but also separates, in which relaxed shapes and organic prints were spliced with Rorschachs of lace windows. Sexy without trying too hard—exactly the way McCartney likes it.
