While rifling through the racks before the Thanksgiving holiday, Zac Posen said he designs Pre-Fall with one eye on awards show season and the other on “building and rebuilding on what’s performing.” There’s nothing unexpected about seeing his name linked with the red carpet, but the building and rebuilding notion was interesting. Posen is a craftsman; he drapes on the dress form. That’s not unheard of among his New York peers, but it becomes rarer as the city’s ranks are filled with streetwear practitioners and athleisure labels. In the case of a cowl-caped brocade dress here, he explained that he “dissected” a significantly heavier ball gown from a previous outing. The modified version is still plenty grand, especially when you compare it to the T-shirts and tracksuits of his NYC counterparts, but its less demanding silhouette seems well keyed to the present moment.
How should a designer so closely associated with eveningwear (not to mention Project Runway and a new cookbook, his current side projects) wrestle with the ongoing casualization of fashionable wardrobes? Posen’s silk jersey program continues and produced a desirable three-quarter-sleeve dress with pin-tucking at the bodice. He’s also had success with his Liberty print cotton frocks in recent seasons, so he made slight modifications to former hits in fresh floral patterns. A long dress with spaghetti straps and deep asymmetric ruffles looked especially winning, but the Liberty print top he layered over a turtleneck knit and tailored city shorts was less convincing. Some of the tailoring looked quite heavy. The takeaway? Experimentation is productive, necessary even; nonetheless, this collection was best when Posen was being Posen. Case in point: a corseted and beaded evening number in a vivid shade of light green inspired by the Fauvist artist Kees van Dongen’s palette. Discussing the dress’s vibrational hue, the group settled on “electric celery.” Yes, you’ll be seeing that on a red carpet soon.
