Ports 1961 creative director Natasa Cagalj was emotional after delivering her first solo runway collection in Milan. “I went back to when I was a student in the ’80s and ’90s, and identifying who I was,” she said. She has worked at both Stella McCartney and Lanvin in her time, and was trained by the legendary professor Louise Wilson at Central Saint Martins. Cagalj presented a collection that was mostly about tailoring and was frankly influenced, she said, by remembering what Helmut Lang meant to her: “I loved it because it was down-to-earth, practical, and yet there was something very gentle and even poetic about it.”
The proportions of the pantsuits she showed had that Lang touch, but there was a different, more abstract feeling about the way she cut into jackets and coats, creating large slits through which panels of shirting trailed. Cagalj has the wherewithal to use good fabrics, and her roughly 15-month tenure at the label, which is designed in the company’s London studio, has attracted growing sales. There was a lot that had substance here—particularly a couple of coats with roomy shoulder lines and a glamorous swagger, and a beautiful white double-breasted trouser suit.
But what was with all the trails and ribbon ties? They were there to suggest, Cagalj said, “that the wearer can use them to tie pieces whichever way she feels.” In the end, they were a bit of a distraction—making one worry about getting caught on door handles or creating incidents in rush-hour commutes. The collection would have been better with fewer appendages, but it had energy and a point of view and was a welcome addition to the Milan calendar.
