“Now if only he would consider bringing back the jeans,” wrote Amy Verner of Alexandre Vauthier at the climax of her typically incisive review of his overwhelmingly ooh-la-la couture collection this summer. In the Vauthier showroom today, the designer heard that plea via a ready-to-wear collection that took its lead from couture, but which widened its nighttime aperture to encompass the elevated daywear AV1 asked of AV2. And yes, there were jeans: in a powerful industrial orange and teamed with an elongated denim trucker with a reflective line of crystal at its frayed hem. As Vauthier allowed in excellent English spoken so fast it was tricky to type in time with it: “You don’t want to be sexy all day from 8:00 a.m. in the morning, so there are dresses with sleeves, a T-shirt with a skirt or pant.” And, of course, the denim.
N.B.: Of course, sexiness is a) relative and b) by no means entirely defined by clothes. Furthermore, Vauthier’s daywear was hardly sackcloth, it was just dialed down a bit from the night. Instead of femme fatale think femme demi-fatale.
Elsewhere, there was a wide selection of gold-buttoned, all-satin Le Smoking suits and miniskirts and wildly ruffled monochrome short dresses in silk: pieces which ascribed to the classic French codes Vauthier explored so thoroughly in couture.
The tiger embroideries that had spellbound Verner at that show were here translated into printed, ruched, short jersey dresses and long, sheath-like jersey dresses. They were etched in three shades of sequin on versatile cotton jersey T-shirts. An extremely thorough selection of shoes veered from the dress-accenting pumps featuring bows, crystal, or pearls to a hilarious high-heel knee-high whose upper mimicked the arm of a bomber jacket. This came in either that whoa-there orange or flecked with the gold or red sequins also seen on the tiger tees. Vauthier seems like a supremely assured character who knows exactly what he’s doing, and precisely for whom he’s doing it. Added bonus: Now Amy can get those jeans she’s been hankering after since July.
