PHOTOS: 5 women’s fashion trends for fall 2010
The clothes that designers showed for fall during New York Fashion Week, which ended Thursday, invoked the classics but with interesting, updated ideas mixed in. Among the trends we think we’ll see women wearing come September are these five.
Runway photos from left: Peter Som, Rodarte and
Alexander Wang is the young New York designer everyone is watching right now, and his collection of sexy, deconstructed pinstripe suits set the tone for a season of creative menswear dressing for women. Among Wang’s most memorable offerings: pinstripe pants with the waistband lopped off to expose a bare navel, and a morning jacket with the front removed and a bandeau left in its place.
For other designers, the trend was more about mixing hard and soft, tailored and ruffled in one outfit. Ralph Lauren paired a charcoal wool men’s vest and “spat pants” that buttoned at the ankles with a romantic purple plaid blouse with puffed sleeves. Diane von Furstenberg put a rosette-embroidered bolero over a pinstripe suit with cropped, flared pants.
Designers put an emphasis on classic tailoring. In a logical extension of the boyfriend blazer and boyfriend sweater craze, Donna Karan described the oversized, man-styled coats in her DKNY collection as “boyfriend coats.”
And it wasn’t a fussy gown but a tuxedo that was the season’s most viable evening option. The best? Phillip Lim’s gold lamé version and Vera Wang’s charcoal wool jersey tuxedo jumpsuit, pictured (Jonas Gustavsson & Peter Stigter / For The Times)
Black is the new black. (We had to say it.) In a season when retailers and shoppers alike are pinching their pennies, there’s a premium on clothes with added value. And so designers knew they couldn’t go wrong with the classic, goes-with-everything color. The resurgence of black also reflects an attempt to cut through the clutter of fast, celebrity-fueled fashion in favor of a less complicated way of dressing.
For some designers, this meant showing black on black. At Mary-Kate and
Painting and collage are an endless well of inspiration for designers.
Proenza Schouler’s collection conjured street art, particularly the splattery, graffiti-print jeans, the result of a new collaboration between designers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez and J Brand jeans. Ralph Rucci worked with Kyoto gold leaf master Hiroto Rashusko on textiles, while the knits and color patch knit dresses at DKNY referenced the graphic style of the Bauhaus.
When it comes to collage, Rodarte designers Kate and Laura Mulleavy have perfected the technique, presenting garments made from mixed materials for several seasons now. This time, they combined floral prints, tulle, lace, beads and pearls to make romantic rag dresses, pictured. In the Ohne Titel collection, Flora Gill and Alexa Adams’ collage dresses combined black leather, crystals and mesh for a look that was more utilitarian but no less artistic. (Jonas Gustavsson and Peter Stigter / For The Times)
We started to see them on the streets this winter, but come fall you will be able to get your pick from nearly every New York designer. The cape came in a dozen permutations, from preppy sport to Russian czarina luxe.
Alexander Wang’s camel-colored, ankle-sweeping cape had a military feel, while Zac Posen’s camel-colored cape was shorter and sweeter, with an oversized collar.
Neither wind nor snow would ruffle Marc Jacobs’ cape, in thick shearling with a bushy fur collar, which looked as if it would be at home on a Brontë on the English moors, while Peter Som’s cape, in deep blue broadtail with a fur hem, pictured, seemed suited for a snow princess.
Phillip Lim had capes and ponchos aplenty. His buff-colored blanket-checked cape was as suited to the hoof and hound set as it was to denizens of hip downtowns. Lim didn’t forget the women who live in climates that rarely if ever get wind and snow. For them, he has a white Oxford cloth button-down cape shirt. (Jonas Gustavsson and Peter Stigter / For The Times)
“Texture mixes, crushed cashmere, clouds of mohair.” That was how Michael Kors summed up the tactile sensation of fall dressing. At his show, camel-colored cashmere coats and jackets had a rumpled, lived-in look, reflecting a new kind of relaxed glamour.
Comfort dressing doesn’t have to mean sweatpants (though there were some of those on the runways — in cashmere, of course). It can mean Kors’ cowl-neck mohair sweater dress, Phillip Lim’s merino wool poncho, Marc Jacobs’ oversized fisherman’s cable knit sweater, Rodarte’s looped knit skirt or Oscar de la Renta’s fuzzy-wuzzy shaggy white tunic, pictured.
It can also mean something entirely more dressed up, such as Jason Wu’s pink, embroidered gauze ribbon dress, which resembled spun sugar, or Tory Burch’s lavender feather skirt.
There’s always fur too, which turned up on nearly every runway. Those fur-trimmed clutch purses from Kors really had a soft touch. (Jonas Gustavsson and Peter Stigter / For The Times)