Like her former boss Alber Elbaz, Audra Danielle Noyes is chiefly interested in women and their psyches. For Spring, it was a story of growing up and finding freedom in control; this season Noyes turned an eye to more tumultuous evolution, and the ensuing emotional scars. Noyes’s takes on her chosen themes continue to skew toward the literal. Her muse here has quite literally been cut open (crisp, slashed shirting), put back together (a beautiful burnout “puzzle” jacquard), and has found herself all the stronger for it (see: almost armor-like metallic lamé). It’s hard to say whether those step-by-step references stem naturally from the designer’s process, or whether they’re peppered through the collection consciously.
Noyes is an American, with a deep-seated love of our nation’s sportswear maestros (Beene, Blass, et al), who cut her teeth in a handful of Parisian houses straight out of SCAD. And so her designs neatly marry the best of both those worlds, the spareness of her shapes elevated by the luxury of textiles from some of Europe’s finest mills and her top-notch draping skills. (A more masterful teacher than Elbaz there could hardly be in that department.) Consider fabrications like a gorgeously textured slub wool metallic, or a lean coat in a painterly dégradé wool. Another topper, with a collar pieced together from plaid and pinstripes, was among the rawest-looking—and best—pieces of the bunch.
Still, Noyes’s evident love of her medium means that at times the collection felt a little unfocused, for all the technical precision and textile excellence on display. A dahlia-printed faille, however zesty, seemed at odds with the more reserved strength of other propositions, and one architectural sleeve detail on a cocktail dress felt a tad fussy. Noyes really worked some magic, though, with one floor-grazing caftan dress, expertly draped and whipped up in spangly metallic and solid black. Some starlet would be wise to snap up that one for her next red carpet cameo.
