“This season came as a visceral reaction to the world we live in. I wanted something that felt really unbridled, very lush, exciting and embraced imagination. I think sometimes the world around us seems so fraught and I just wanted something that felt almost like a jewel of a surprise,” Joseph Altuzarra said during a preview ahead of his fall runway show, held at the New York Public Library. The collection served as Altuzarra’s final chapter to his four-part study of nature, mythology and rituals; fall nodding to author Charlotte Higgins “Greek Myths: A New Retelling,” for its female-protagonist point of view.
Altuzarra set the tone by opening the show with an explosion of color emerging from darkness a la giant parkas boasting painterly Rorschach prints, said to be designed in the same abstract manner as the folded inkblot tests.
“A lot of the artworks that are in the collection come from looking at the ways in which people would access magic and creativity — Rorschach, ink blots, reading the tea leaves. We wanted everything to feel triumphant, mythic and really fearless,” Altuzarra explained, building the idea further into a stellar brushed wool coat and cropped peplum jackets atop satin column skirts and easy knit dressing (some with ombre interpretations of signature shibori), all cut in lengthy proportions and styled for fall appeal with leather opera gloves and chunky knit hats.
“I had a very specific idea about silhouette — I wanted almost everything to be long and have this very evening feeling,” the designer said, nailing the idea of aspiration and wearability most prominently with wrapped, twisted and knotted leather dresses and mermaid skirts and a procession of draped and hooded grecian jersey goddess gowns.
A selection of feather and botanical hand-painted printed and embroidered numbers furthered his idea of divination. “The idea with the whole end of the collection is almost like nature overtaking the body. The idea that these natural motifs becoming the spine or the lungs,” Altuzarra said, rendering the tattoo-like motifs anatomically before closing the show full-circle with over-the-top (albeit highly crafted), enveloping satin evening parkas, cut in ‘50s and ‘60s couture-like shapes clearly meant for the red carpet.
“The sense I’m getting is that customers and buyers are looking for emotion,” Altuzarra said, delivering for fall with sensual, mythological-bent repetition.
