In the absence of Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim—the Monse designers will make their Oscar de la Renta debut in February at the Fall ’17 shows—Alex Bolen, ODLR’s CEO, spoke to editors before the Pre-Fall presentation this morning. “A journalist recently lamented that nobody dresses up anymore,” he began, “but at Oscar we think women do dress up, and that’s what we tried to do here.”
The collection’s roots are in photographs Mario Testino took of native Peruvians, which were exhibited at the Queen Sofía Spanish Institute in 2013 and 2014. “Oscar loved them,” Bolen stated. Designed by the in-house team, the new clothes are not as evocative or literal as the costumes in the pictures, but they are clearly linked via surface details like embroideries and rich, earthy hues, and by silhouettes such as bell-sleeved peasant blouses tucked into belted midi skirts. Those airy, away-from-the-body ensembles were juxtaposed with dresses in fine-gauge knits that, while utterly decorous, had a bit more cling. The evening offering was narrowly focused on strapless midi dresses with minimal embellishments, which made the black Chantilly lace gown and matching lace bolero stand out. In all likelihood, Garcia and Kim will take the more freewheeling, multiple-choice approach to special-occasion dressing that De la Renta used to.
If this show confirms anything about dressing up now, it’s that it is much more casual than it was in De la Renta’s earlier days. Even the evening numbers were paired with delicate flat slides.