Ralph Lauren, Mansur Gavriel serve up sunny in-season collections at N.Y. Fashion Week
Although the grand see-now, buy-now runway experiment — that’s where labels present collections that are available immediately instead of six months down the road — has pretty much run its course at New York Fashion Week, it’s not gone completely the way of the dodo. A high-profile case in point is Ralph Lauren, which presented a get-away-from-it-all spring and summer 2018 collection, which had cold-weather-weary fashion editors yearning for warmer climes.
Taking inspiration from the Lauren family’s home in Jamaica’s Montego Bay, the collection presented here Monday was rooted in a palette of blue and white with regatta-flag colors — most notably reds and yellows — providing pops of accent color.
A few of the more memorable looks included a knee-length indigo denim dress hemmed in fringe that bounced and eddied like waves lapping at the shoreline; a canary yellow crepe evening dress that glowed like the midday sun; and a floor-length navy blue dress with side stripes of white, yellow, red and green that widened as they ran south from armpit to ankle. A few, but not all, of the runway collection pieces are available for purchase at www.ralphlauren.com.
Another label aiming to scratch the “gotta have it now” itch at New York Fashion Week was Mansur Gavriel, which presented an in-season women’s apparel and accessories collection on Sunday. The New York-designed, Italian-made label launched by Rachel Mansur and Floriana Gavriel in early 2012 started with handbags before adding footwear for spring 2016 and apparel for fall 2017.
The brand’s spring and summer 2018 collection included sweaters, dresses, skirts and button-down shirts in a range of pastel hues (think blush pink and sky blue) punctuated with a handful of sunny yellow pieces including A-line trench coats and flare-legged trousers. That bright shade carried over to the accessories offerings as well where it graced a lambskin tote so bright it probably shouldn’t be stared directly at without protective eyewear.
The collection is available at www.mansurgavriel.com, the label’s two bricks-and-mortar stores in New York and select retail boutiques and pop-up shops. For Angelenos who can’t get enough of the sunny stuff, you’re in luck. According to the show notes, Mansur Gavriel is on track to open its third U.S. store sometime this month — in sunny Los Angeles.
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