Michael Kors’s business is global. As he talked his way through the looks in his new Pre-Fall collection, he referenced the smart coats he saw on the street on a recent trip to Shanghai, the over-the-top MKC pieces that women are buying in “capitals of crazy” like Cannes and Forte de Marmi, and the dress code requirements of next May’s Costume Institute Gala. For a designer, that’s a fairly large brief.
With all that ground to cover, Kors says he approaches design this way: “She’s got to fall in love.” That means he imbued his clothes and accessories with surprising, pleasing details, from a simple blush pink cashmere V-neck that turned to reveal draped slits in back and another fine gauge knit with slit sleeves that created a cape-like effect to a little black dress with a clear plastic hem encrusted with huge crystals. The bags come with small, zipped slots to slip your phone into.
Flowers were a recurring motif, and he found novel ways to treat them, be it the silhouetted white-on pink-floral of an intarsia mink coat or the army green-on-black “floraflage” pattern of a silk duchesse boyfriend anorak. That coat and the lace-trimmed slip it was tossed over, along with the utility pants elsewhere in the collection, conjured images of a 1990s Stella Tennant, who Kors name-checked at the beginning of the presentation. His other muses? Kate Moss (an athletic, racerback gown) and Audrey Hepburn in Two for the Road (a short, ’60s-ish dress covered with ostrich plumes). Like we said: a lot of ground, and well-done, too.
