“Days are longer. The sun is warmer. And the Oscar de la Renta pre-fall 2022 collection reflects the joyful promise of summer,” read collection notes from Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim’s latest collection for the brand. Like spring, color and optimism shone through from day to evening, as did the garments’ playful feel.
Spring’s girly tweeds inspired the designers to go shorter in silhouette.
“When they came to life, it made us think of the ’90s,” Garcia noted of a baby yellow cropped jacket and short set.
Also present: a teal tweed miniskirt, paired with a cocktail top with poufed taffeta neckline and sleeves, or casual chic and sexy knit “suiting” renditions that continued the era’s influence. Elsewhere, lightweight summer suiting came in sorbet-inspired ombré hues, or was paired with gradient knits.
“We’re trying to keep it a little more fun and casual. Women aren’t sitting in the boardroom everyday anymore,” Kim chimed in, noting that their bestselling category and fabrication inspired the collection’s double-faced stretch wool dresses in cheerful, garden-fresh hues.
The same idea could be said of the brand’s seasonal motifs. There were banana-emblazoned knits and dresses, a billowing ombré dress, floral scarf-printed numbers, and notable mixed plaid patchwork dresses, shorts and jackets. The modernized garments were developed into prints from Gentili Mosconi from an archive plaid embroidery originally created by Oscar de la Renta himself in the 1980s.
Daywear’s messaging translated nicely into Garcia and Kim’s cocktail and evening attire, which offered ample glam, with moments of artisanal, undone textures. (The glamorous feel could be said of Sarah Jessica Parker’s custom pewter silk chiffon bustier cocktail dress with hand embroideries and matching cape, which the duo had designed for Wednesday night’s New York City premiere of the Sex and the City reboot “And Just Like That.”)
Volume and shine persisted through myriad designs: a purple cocktail dress with poufed skirt and cape-like back blouson, allover pansy embroidered gowns and sequined numbers, like an eye-catching silver cocktail shaker with subtle eyelash fringed hem. A white minidress continued the idea, visually abstracting a large-scale floral in eyelash sequins in a very appealing way.
“I wanted to develop an embroidery that was mimicking Laura’s prints so we took these printed, voluminous blooms and saw this was a very brush-stroke-looking technique, while looking frayed from far away,” Garcia explained.
“The frayed edges made me think of shredding — so these are all little bows in bias-cut taffeta,” he added of a rose-colored opera cape, covered in a repetition of tonal bows (with matching minidress hidden beneath). A short yellow frock and full-length black dress incorporated the decoration from the waist down.
The duo also manipulated the idea of shredding into a bombastic cream tulle evening gown, as well as a special hand-done tweed-reminiscent skirt suit made up of light, shredded fabric, making the collection come full circle.
