Its 40th-anniversary celebrations in New York last season behind it, Escada did a series of mini-shows in Paris today more fitting of its place in the fashion sphere. Escada has historical capital, but it doesn’t have much in the way of current relevance. Design director Niall Sloan’s job is to reverse that equation, or to at least bring it closer to equilibrium. Recalibrating the presentation was a start. Adjusting the aesthetic is the harder job.
Sloan picked a heck of a backstory. Having watched Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, he was riveted, not just by the Austrian actress’s beauty, but also by her ingenuity. She was an inventor on the side, and developed a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes; though it was discounted by the Navy until the 1960s, decades later it would go on to inform the development of Bluetooth technology and Wi-Fi. Lemarr was beauty and brains personified—and irresistible to a designer with both glamour and power dressing on his mind.
The actress’s scandalous 1933 film Ecstasy became a graphic on a white midi skirt and sweatshirt, and her escape from her controlling husband, as recounted in her autobiography, informed the inside-out clothing embroidered with crystals. (Apparently Lemarr split wearing maid’s clothes, her jewels sewn into the lining of her garments.) Elsewhere, Wi-Fi symbols decorated intarsia knit scarves. Like we said, quite the backstory. In the end, though, the Ecstasy graphics were outliers. On the whole, this collection was subtler and more sophisticated than last season—an improved second act.
