How much of himself is Serge Ruffieux putting into Carven? One metal-sided handbag in this tightly packed, occasionally excellent collection suggested quite a lot: Stamped into those metal patterns was a line illustration of Waterhouse-inspired nymphs taken directly from a tattoo on the designer’s chest.
As well as skin in the game, Ruffieux puts in sweat, too. He said his primary research for this collection was pounding Parisian streets, people-watching. The scavenged impressions brought back to Carven included an emphasis on oversize outerwear of a menswear provenance with twisted and tweaked fabrications, a cropped jacquard blanket coat lined with corduroy, another longer blanket jacket with a diamond-quilted back, and a pale yellow pared-down duffle with lily-etched shoulder details. This menswear was often (but not always) layered over strata that became filmier the lower they went: a high buffalo-check quilted jacket over a pottery-printed shirt over a gauzy bricolage embroidery skirt. There was a series of not totally original but still finely done mid-length ruched-by-ribbon dresses with bodies in slick-finish black fabric or dévoré pottery-patterned velvet with frayed hems at the sportswear inserts at the shoulder.
The shoes at Ruffieux’s Carven are exceptionally great. To the seen-before-but-this-season-updated pom-pom fringe moccasins, he added a kind of “Mary Poppins has a breakdown” boot, heaped with ribbons and featuring an inverted chisel toe: one of my favorite things. Also, the oversize bags in olive and rusty orange were lovely.
Garment-wise, Ruffieux delivered often but in isolation. The outerwear was good, as were his lozenge-hemmed skirts, his kilts, and his high-waisted multitudinously buttoned pants—and the tailoring, when presented full force, rocked. What this collection failed to do, however, was to alchemize the street-gleaned sourced material in combinations that really exploded on the eye. Ruffieux needs to refine his litmus for fashion alkaline and fashion acid, then put his yen for eclectica into combinations that fizz, pop, and make us beg him to do it again.
