LINDSAY WHITE (IMG MODELS)
The birth of a nephew had Brian Reyesthinking about the old world and the new, and the voyage between. So the Colombian-American designer took Ellis Island as the theme for his Resort collection—travel of a somewhat-less-than-resort kind. "It's a girl who brings her roots with her," Reyes said of his muse, and so there were pieces that married European flair with American ingenuity: An Austrian-stripe dress, inspired by the heavy brocaded textiles of the old world, had a detachable skirt.
LINDSAY WHITE (IMG MODELS)
There were times when the story line got in the way of the designs—a dress inspired by a violin, some imagined traveler's prized possession, felt fussy—but when it worked, it worked. There was a well-aged, slightly Mitteleuropa glamour to a lavender culotte suit shown with a cape.
LINDSAY WHITE (IMG MODELS)
Furs, which Reyes first introduced for Fall, had a continental charm, too (and a very New York cut: the T-shirt jacket). Then, the voyage: striped marinière dresses and a leather-accented "seaman's jacket" in double-faced silk crepe. And, at the end of the journey, the print: an image, snapped and then distorted, of oil and water. "The first thing she saw when she arrived," Reyes explained.
LINDSAY WHITE (IMG MODELS)
LINDSAY WHITE (IMG MODELS)
LINDSAY WHITE (IMG MODELS)
Juan Carlos Obando explored two seemingly opposing themes for Resort: one, the practical (what pieces, he asked himself, would work best on the sales floor?); the other, fantasy. "I call it 'Falling Fairies in the Wicked World,' " Obando said of his latest effort. "Or beautiful clothes gone bad."
On the practical tip, plenty of versatile sportswear could be found in this tightly edited offering. As for Obando's more dramatic ideas? They're all in the details. The technique-minded designer turned his talents to washing and dyeing processes, turning out a beautifully finished silk and wool coat that had been boiled to resemble rumpled cotton. In another instance, the same fabric, used for a cropped jacket, was treated to look like well-worn leather.
The pale blush hue of a ball gown skirt bled into a rich flamingo pink at the hem, looking as if it had been accidentally dragged across a vat of dye. In a wicked world, Obando has a flair for producing clothes that are polished without being pretentious.
