New York Fashion Week spring 2014: Diesel Black Gold review
NEW YORK -- Designer Andreas Melbostad’s sophomore collection for Diesel Black Gold women’s collection hit the catwalk at Vanderbilt Hall in Grand Central Station here Tuesday during New York Fashion Week.
The inspiration: “Strength and fragility meet to express a new duality,” to quote the show notes.
The look: On the runway, that juxtaposition of hard and soft, fierce and feminine, armored-but-vulnerable elements included pairing the denim and leather of the line’s DNA with lighter fabrics that included silk crepe de chine and cotton voile and expanding the brand’s usual stark black-and-white color palette to include the palest of pastel pinks and greens.
A certain lightness was also created by mesh-like laser-cut fabric, sewn eyelet holes and leather trousers that laced along the outside of the leg from waist to ankle. That was juxtaposed by a smelting plant’s worth of metal embellishment, ranging from studs, buttons buckles and snaps to paillettes ranging in size from dimes to quarters (and printed patterns of same) as well as metal grommets, some of which served merely as decoration while others did double duty to hold the drawstring for empire-waist shirts, tunics, dresses and skirts.
The scene: Among the notables joining Diesel co-founder and head honcho Renzo Rosso in the front row of the show at Grand Central Station’s stately Vanderbilt Hall were models Coco Rocha and Petra Nemcova as well as Kanye West, who seems to have reached a near James Franconian level of ubiquity during this run of New York Fashion Week.
The verdict: Even though it was barely-there pale, it was nice to see a little color creep into the collection. The combination of that and the use of some softer, less over-the-top fabrications, made the spring and summer 2014 women’s wear collection feel much more wearable than we remember from past seasons.
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