The evolution that Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia are overseeing at Oscar de la Renta is one that primarily concerns construction. Young women want softer, lighter garments. In tandem with that comes a certain offhandedness that might be unfamiliar to longtime clients of the label. “So we’re doing it slowly,” said Kim at a showroom appointment today.
Inarguably, though, they feel emboldened now. Response to their Spring collection with its emphasis on Moroccan and Indian silhouettes was overwhelmingly positive, and Pre-Fall amplifies them. Garcia travels to Mumbai four times a year for business and he picks up a lot of fabric when he’s there. This season, he and Kim have explored traditional Indian menswear shapes, showing skirt-pant combos in lightweight printed silks under Western blazers. It was definitely a new look for Oscar de la Renta, but one that the designers feel that the house founder would’ve embraced. “Oscar believed in eclecticism in clothes, and so do we,” said Garcia. “We’re not American; we travel a lot for work. It feels natural and instinctual to us to do pieces that feel traveled.”
That sensibility extended into their eveningwear offering, where sheer tulle “naked dresses” were decorated with metallic gold threading or multicolor floral embellishments, and draped, bias-cut unconstructed numbers came in many iterations. Amid all that softness, an emerald green one-shoulder nipped-and-tucked taffeta party dress evoking the gussied-up glory days of New York in the 1980s looked freshest. At the new Oscar de la Renta, everything is fair game, and that’s another thing that’s likely to work in its favor with young shoppers.
