A Western collection? That’s old fashion territory, previously prospected by many before Dean and Dan Caten today. In fact, haven’t they already gone West themselves? No matter: What this coed show did with total efficiency was freshly recast the genre through a double-D filter and deliver a prairie-full of fine product.
The Catens adeptly presented a series of crossover pieces for women and men—buffalo-check Western jackets, rhinestone-set shirting, lassoed pony knits, DD belt buckles, and kicky beaded pants and jeans—as well as gave each gender room to roam. The menswear featured many fine outerwear and denim combinations plus gussied-up rodeo gear: silk printed Western shirts, rhinestone jackets, and sequined sleeve inserts. The most striking looks intersected long-hemmed, semi-sheer white cotton shirting adapted from the womenswear between the much more conventionally masculine outerwear and pants.
Womenswear featured cowboy boot–detail, strapped, high-heeled sandals; layered beaded shirting over wickedly cut jodhpur combat pants; wide-skirted saloon queen gowns in cotton voile over sequined leggings and bodysuits; and even more broadly skirted gowns in layered patches of printed silk. Westworld meets Go West (and briefly narrated by John Waters’s Babs Johnson) this show was a fun, commercially faultless mosey.
