New York Fashion Week: Libertine’s runway is a raving good time

L.A.-based Libertine staged its spring and summer 2015 runway show at the Lincoln Center tents here Monday during New York Fashion Week, and it managed to up the ante on a season already awash in color.

For spring, Libertine’s designer, Johnson Hartig, had one word of inspiration: “Kandi” -- the brightly colored DIY jewelry made up of chunky beads, plushy animals (and even the occasional baby pacifier) that’s worn and exchanged as a gesture of friendship at rave parties.

Those colorful flourishes were layered over, worn under or grafted to leather jackets, screenprinted T-shirts, trousers, shorts and outerwear with a distinctly British punk vibe. The resulting men’s and women’s collection was a raving good time indeed.

On the women’s side there were dresses and skirts covered in clusters of colorful beads or allover print flowers, a cropped jacket in a patchwork of colorful faux fur, a handfulof pieces with allover print (or perhaps needlepoint) tiger heads and a couple of overcoats embellished with mirrored tiles that may well have been liberated from a disco ball.

For the fellows there were biker jackets, hoodies, sweaters, boxing-style shorts and tank tops covered (and we mean covered) with all manner of embroidered applique patches -- winking devils, martini glasses, glittering roses as well as the words “Golden Child” or “Golden Boy” that appeared on a handful of pieces.

(There were also offerings for both that included all-over multi-color pompom details, bold black-and-white puzzle-piece graphics.)

Given the inspiration, it should come as no surprise that the real eye-candy here were the accessories -- necklaces composed of strings and strings of colorful beads, some with Lego-block panels that spelled out “Libertine” or “LIB 4 LYF3,” chunky bracelets studded with colorful glass beads and sunglasses with Kandi-bead-covered frames.

When it came time for the runway finale, Hartig and the models bounded out on stage with their smartphones and cameras in hand (one was even carrying a GoPro rig), snapping photos and cheering enthusiastically.

For a brief moment the artificial barrier between model and audience -- watcher and watched -- was gone. The string of candy-colored beads had become happily unstrung, swirling and eddying through the room.

Which, I’m guessing, is probably a lot like how it feels at a rave.

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