This was a smooth, serene, mildly spaced-out trip from Kenzo—although it missed some of the bumps and judders that generate excitement. As per last season, Carol Lim and Humberto Leon flirted with the extraterrestrial—Etienne Russo's fantastic set of sand, basalt, and sparkle-sliced boulders that rotated at the finale could have been the Vasquez Rocks or Cestus III (that's a Trekkie reference, but a deep one). The roundness of the sunglasses' frames was meant to hint at an interplanetary significance. The motif that really tugged in this collection, though, was one subject to gravity: parachuting. There was that "Pull" command on shirts, sweats, and the back of a yolky yellow mac. And elsewhere you saw the puckering of cross seams across garments in silkily finished nylon, capri-length jumpsuits, and D-rings trailing ripcords and bags, which themselves looked like messily rolled-up canopies. Although unfortunately not demonstrated in the show, afterward Leon said that the trailing straps served a purpose, both aesthetic and functional: They could be pulled to tighten, raise, lower—or, presumably sometimes perhaps, just to ruche—the clothes they were attached to.
With the odd exception of hot pink jersey or soft wide stripes on segment dyed denim, this was an on-the-whole neutral, wanly toned collection of lightweight synthetic—or synthetic to the eye—fabrics. Sometimes texture provided compensation, in enthusiastically crinkled suits and, most of all, in a marvelously ridged raised knit that was meant to look like a cactus but defied appearances: "It's really soft," said Lim, "you can hug someone wearing it." It was cheering to learn that Lim is an adrenalin sports junkie who has thrown herself out of a fair few planes in search of a rush. This collection rather lacked both the wit and the punch of the last—it could have done with some Gorn—but viewed in isolation, it was fine enough.
