Serendipity—a cocktail of Calvados, apple juice, champagne, and sugar, topped with a spriglet of mint—struck immediately before this Aganovich show, courtesy of Colin Field, head bartender at the Ritz. Field, white-jacketed and mixologizing to the max, was in the atrium. But why? Brooke Taylor explained: “When we first came to Paris we would go to the bar and Colin would take care of us.”
“We were so broke and damaged!” Nana Aganovich interjected.
“Watching someone do something they are so good at is fantastic,” Taylor added. “And it educated us a little about luxury. Because Colin isn’t a flashy barman. He just loves doing something amazingly well and sharing it with you.”
Aganovich and Taylor, the husband-and-wife team leading the house, added that they had invited Field—who is temporarily professionally homeless after the fire at the Ritz—to shake, muddle, and mix his magic as a celebration. “Coming to France was hard, but in the space of a year everything has fallen into place. Our team is together, our atelier is in place, and we are really together now,” the couple said, piecemeal.
The fruits of that togetherness were visible in this dramatic, verve-filled, and overwhelmingly monochromatic collection (the exceptions were two dark green dresses and the green patch on the left elbow of an otherwise black one). There was plenty of historical referencing—18th-century full feminine skirts and masculine topcoats, as well as a biker jerkin that seemed a mite Jacobite—but the real narrative here was about an interplay between constraint and release.
Knotted fastenings replaced stitching on seams that arced like a cracked fault line from shoulder to hem on black dresses of English silk jacquard, allowing white cotton undershirting to flash forth from below. The collars on those topcoats were grandiosely accentuated, buttressing the head in tandem with the strange strapping headpieces—they looked almost medical—worn by the models (who also tolerated inky black Bert and Ernie eyebrows). Fitted, ruffle-front jackets clashed with frothing tutus over remarkably unremarkable slim-fit pants. All the looks were incongruously anchored by Converse All Stars, most worn with contrasting colored lacing that reflected the laced backs of jackets, pant legs, and coats. One white look, two long shirtdresses of roughed up, papery Japanese velvet near the end, featured shoes with cosmetic uppers of collared waffle-cotton. Sleeves were ruched to within an inch of their lives, and those shirtdresses—in oily linen or that velvet—cut seriously high at the side of each thigh. For sure the Serendipity plus Pete Drungle’s immersive, intoxicating piano accompaniment added to the atmosphere. Even without them, however, the dark romance of this collection—when Clarissa met Lovelace, with many knotted, subversive twists along the way—made it quite gripping to witness.
