A packed schedule often necessitates visiting a designer backstage before the show instead of after. The upshot is that this spoils the surprise. Such was the case at Alexis Mabille, where dresses in fuchsia lace, chartreuse satin, and a gleaming turquoise radzimir silk were revealed to the crowd as a gradual buildup that began in black.
Calling the collection Rainbow Splash, the designer was intrepid in his matchup of shades and silhouettes. “Every color has its own energy,” he said. Accordingly, he moved through different moods as well: mature yet modern from a deep blue spencer jacket and gown skirt; ingenue and party ready from a handkerchief frock in lipstick pink encircled in a spray of tulle. Gold may not qualify as a color; yet this grouping was suitably glitzy.
Alas, the pull of pattern evidently proved too strong, hence pleated stripes, a floral-print lamé organza, and an outsize arrangement of hand-painted flowers that sprouted with dimensional embroidery. One particularly diva-esque gown combined a glistening blue-black sheath with a yellow duchesse-satin cape that rounded inward like a deflated hot-air balloon. By contrast, when that same brilliant yellow was pitched against coral as a guipure, the freshness came through.
While Mabille has always taken a liberal approach to hue, his connection of “freedom of color” with “freedom of thought” helped ensure a spectrum of options for those who gravitate towards his designs. To close the show, he presented three white gowns; he insisted weren’t destined for brides, but they nonetheless suggested his overly glorified view of femininity with emphasis on the male gaze. “I like this sense of women wanting to be objects of desire, but at the same time, they don’t care.”
