Marc Jacobs showed a stunning collection Monday night at the Armory, set to the feverish violins of "Summer" from Vivaldi's Four Seasons, which only tightened the strings on a pitch-perfect show. Models walked around a bronzed sculpture evocative of Richard Serra—and the homages only began there. Jacobs played with the most iconic looks from the most iconic designers, but made them each his own. A Chanel-inspired suit was woven with bright gold and silver. A Missoni knit had target-shaped pasties stitched right in. Halston dresses came atop glittered platforms. And every model wore giant flowers—in her hair, around her neck, even belted around her waist.
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Jacobs' collection seemed directly inspired by Jodie Foster's character in Taxi Driver: large-brimmed hats, frizzy hair, high-waisted pants. As he described this season's woman to The New York Times' Cathy Horyn backstage: "Lots of New York dolls."
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Jacobs' Fall/Winter 2010 collection offered muted tones; Spring/Summer 2011, by contrast, served up doses of rich color. Jacobs' '70s glamour girl became sexy in eveningwear, in a series of sheer dresses with layers and floral detail.
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Jacobs took a final lap around his elliptical structure at the Armory on Monday night. The show, which was called for 8 p.m., began at 8:01 p.m. and was over by 8:11 p.m. "Gorgeous super 70s glam!" tweeted Glamour editor Cindi Leive of the collection. "This wasn't Mr. Jacobs' most moving collection," Horyn wrote on her blog, "but it had a finessing glamour and was a natural follow to last season's elegant show and longer lengths."
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Anna Wintour, center right, held down the fort in the Vogue section of the front row at Carolina Herrera on Monday morning at Lincoln Center. In her program notes, Herrera explained that her collection was inspired by the traditional dress of Korea and 18th-century botanical plates. This translated to a collection filled with high-brim hats, origami detailing, and dresses printed with flowers and their descriptions.
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Herrera took her bow amid lines of her collections. Gathered on stage at the end of the show, her pieces—many of which were printed with botanical labels—looked like a garden of diverse plants.
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Donna Karan has long drawn upon all things mystical in her collections, and Monday's Spring 2011 collection was no different. "I wanted to express the naturalness of the seeds and the weeds and the grasses," she said just after the show had finished. "I wanted that to come out more than color." Anyone who hasn't been to the Integral Yoga Institute or perused the collected works of Deepak Chopra has no cause for concern, though: What this translated to were scores of crème-colored sheaths and studiously crumpled jackets.
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Karan, The New York Times reported, drew inspiration from "raw romance"—the moment when "one wakes up in a lover's bed, picks up some wrinkled clothes off the floor and walks right out the door."
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Susan Sarandon, seated in the front row at Donna Karan, was mauled by photographers as she waited for the show to start. But it was her Maltese, Penny, who stole the show. Sarandon wore a lavender hip-hugging Donna Karan number. "The nice thing about Donna's stuff is that's always flattering and very packable, so if you're taking things on a plane or something, it works really well," she told The Daily Beast's Jacob Bernstein. "And she does stuff that's good for redheads." We asked how she felt about her recent New York Magazine profile portraying her as the patron saint of a new pingpong club that's run by Jonathan Bricklin, the 33-year-old entrepreneuer whom the tabloids have said she's dating. (The two maintain that they're just friends, though New York seemed affectionately skeptical.) "I loved it," Sarandon said of the piece. "I thought it really captured the feeling of the club, the chaos of it." We were hoping to hit with something a little harder, but Penny began to get restless. "You have to stay here, Penny," Sarandon said. "You have to stay here." Suddenly, we were back to the dog. Do she and her mistress regularly attend Fashion Week? "I don't go to shows a lot, no," said Sarandon. "But she's gone to some openings of things. She likes to get out."
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Just as a monsoon hit New York late Monday night, Sarah Jessica Parker flew into the Halston presentation at the Gladstone Gallery in Chelsea. She wore a salmon-colored minidress and matching suede heels from the Spring collection—and, of course, had managed to dodge every single raindrop on her way in. As sopping fans gathered to pay their respects to Parker, who is the creative director for Halston Heritage, she was quick to emphasize that she had nothing to do with the current collection. "Oh, it was all Marios!" she demurred. For his part, Marios Schwab, who took the reins as creative director in 2009, explained that his current collection was inspired by "wild orchid flowers." He was inspired, he said, by the "way technically Halston was cutting his garments, like the scarf-like elements," but set them "to a modernized proportion."
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Now we're hungry for Easter egg candy: Monique Lhuillier's elegant Spring collection introduced pastels, cherry blossom-adorned bell skirts, and strapless dresses made purely from appliqué flowers. Set against a backdrop of massive pink flowers, the collection veered from the feminine and airy to the grown-up and sexy in a few pieces, like a red column dress and metallic mermaid gown. Oscar contenders, take note.
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The upbeat and elegant mood at Monique Lhuillier translated to the front row, where pretty young things Maggie Grace, Alexis Bledel, and Emma Roberts looked on.
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New York Fashion Week is always filled with surprises, but one thing is a constant: Betsey Johnson will never disappoint. The rocker-glam designer seems to make made-to-order pieces of high camp, tailored to various levels of extreme volume and painted in various shades of so bright. At her show on Monday, Johnson's models rode bikes and carried skateboards on stage. She positioned the collection as an "ode to New York," assigning different pieces to different neighborhoods. Sailor girls represented South Street Seaport, florals stood in for Central Park, and preppy dollhouse dresses channeled the Upper East Side.
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