It’s hard to argue with a collection full of clothes beautifully made to be beautiful that succeeds as well as this. The only possible caveats to proffer are that a) this uptown cracker of a collection from Simon Holloway will almost certainly be fiendishly expensive (I felt a sense of impending doom just to be near a double-faced, tortoise-shell-detailed jacket in Agnona's finest gauge cashmere) and b) this was not a collection that said much apart from “I am very rich and beautiful, and I am dressed accordingly.”
With ODLR currently in a fallow phase, there may be an opportunity at present to seize the “ladies who lunch” market. Agnona, long false-started, might be in the mix. Holloway went straight for the exquisitely attenuated jugular by imagining this collection through a prism of Truman Capote’s swans (Slim Keith, Babe Paley, Gloria Vanderbilt, et al). Paley inspired the double-faced linen-to-satin softly tailored jackets. There was a happy interplay of softness and expression in an intarsia dress of blue lace and crisp printed cotton. The apparently white denim buttoned jacket and pants, in fact denim-effect crepe cotton topstitched and bonded with a silk lining, was formally casual in the best possible way. Marella Agnelli’s severely lush aesthetic inspired the closing column dresses in yellow, lime, and pink. This was not retro, though: The knit dresses of contrasting machined panels whose Lycra-spiked bodices ensured fit and flare were testament to that.
There is not much opportunity in 2016 to casually wear a nude printed fil coupe silk floral and butterfly-print dress under a lightweight fox fur mini chubby in green. If you have it, and can have it, seize it.
