Donna Karan 2008 spring collection
Donna Karan came out on the runway to take a bow at the end of her spring 2008 show yesterday wearing skinny pants cinched with a wide belt. Like many female designers, Karan thinks about her own wardrobe needs a lot when she designs. Since much of her collection featured wide belts highlighting the waist, it made sense that she showed off that look too. But why didn't she give equal time to the full skirts she sent out on the runway? Maybe because full skirts, although beautiful, are not in the traditional working woman's wardrobe. Although the collection was light and feminine, in a neutral palette of beautiful nudes, sands, and an occasional dash of red or denim blue, Karan moved far away from her functional, practical signature.
Like Karan, Isabel Toledo also takes some of her inspiration from her personal fashion forays. Her collection for Anne Klein had an interesting printed fabric in it that she said in her program notes was inspired by an episode wherein her husband, the illustrator Ruben Toledo, accidentally spilled paint on a dress of hers. She called it an "art attack." It was unusual, if not functional. Toledo's collections for Anne Klein — this is the second one — have a quirky sensibility but they seem more like incubators for ideas rather than the well thought out commercial collections perhaps they ought to be.
L'wren Scott is a stylist to Hollywood stars like Nicole Kidman and she spends a lot of time thinking through how clothes will look on her clients. So it makes sense that she should take the process one step further and design her own line of ready-to-wear. She showed her third collection yesterday in the Gagosian art gallery with her super-famous boyfriend, Mick Jagger, looking on. Scott takes the prize for the most civilized fashion week presentation: 30 or so guests were served lunch in Japanese bento boxes while a handful of models walked through the gallery in Scott's glamorous skinny pantsuits, slender dresses, and rock 'n roll capes.