In Carmen March’s world, girls just wanna have fun. For spring, many of her looks were a party in and of themselves, strewn with a confetti of painterly prints, jazzy motifs, and ripples of glassy sequins and ruffles.
If it rang a little proto-MTV, there’s a good reason for it: The designer has been listening to a lot of classic New Wave lately, which led her to mull over the granddaddy of New Wave TV series: Miami Vice. “I remembered all the techniques, I started going backwards and thinking about how those videos were made,” March explained, referring to the cop show’s slow-mo, music-heavy style.
Flipping that cinematic aesthetic to a women’s wardrobe, in a color palette of mints, pinks, and light blues, she offered up a snap-up, funnel-neck Perfecto in butter-soft Spanish leather, and prints evoking Keith Haring’s graffiti-like signature, most successfully on a liquid blue technical fabric. A tailored seersucker in blue and white Prince of Wales check was a good option for daytime, but the Carmen March base loves the nightlife. To that end, the designer gave them a wealth of options with pumped-up volumes. But the watercolor mint evening gown had such restrained elegance it wouldn’t have looked out of place in the Kennedy White House, an ensemble done back-to-front in dévoré cotton, and a little black dress embellished with plumes of pink and silver struck just the right note. Throw any of those together with a pair of major rhinestone earrings, and there’s all the Miami Vice mileage a girl might ever need.
