See You Next Fall

Wrapping Up Fashion Week, Designers Whose Ideas Need To Walk Before They Can Fly

Hemmed in: Francisco Costa's designs for Calvin Klein seem to view a woman's body more as design hurdle than inspiration, hobbling movement with narrow cuts. (By Maria Valentino For The Washington Post)

NEW YORK

In so many industries, delicate creative souls are bullied by corporate suits and unimaginative bean counters. Television viewers read about how some philistine in the corner office wants to drain the creative tension out of a new series in hopes that pablum will appeal to a broader audience. Critically praised sitcoms are canceled. Other shows barely get an opportunity to find an audience before they are killed off. Musicians talk about fighting to retain their unique voice and resisting the pressure to kowtow to prevailing trends. And filmmakers regularly tell tales of mortgaging their homes and racking up credit card debt just so they don't have to deal with the constraints of a big studio. Not in high-end fashion.

Once a designer manages to lasso a financial backer with deep pockets -- certainly no easy feat -- the guys in the suits mostly keep quiet. (The most famous owner-designer spat was Tom Ford vs. the owner of Gucci Group. And that wasn't about design direction, that was about who gets to run the company.) Investors tend to be enamored of the glamorous aura that surrounds fashion. They equate eccentricity with genius. They mistake bad design with esoteric intellectualism. And they confuse a likable and charming personality with someone who actually knows what he's doing.

This became apparent as designers unveiled their fall collections here for Fashion Week, which ended Friday. The independence of the fashion designer was raised during the debate over the size of models on the runway. At an industry panel on the subject, eating disorder specialists, fashion show producers and others voiced their concern about the models being too thin, but no one felt it was appropriate to intervene with rules or prohibitions, only suggestions. In other words, the designer's aesthetic is sacred. Designers have been visited by the muse; no second-guessing by some nutritionist. And when it comes down to the clothes, no meddling from private investors, venture capitalists or private equity funds. The fashion industry gets the money as well as full creative control. It's often a deal that does no one any good.

No other creative field allows a person to thrust his or her point of view into the spotlight so often. An independent filmmaker can work five or 10 years on a project before it ever reaches theaters. In many ways, all that time allows his vision to mature and evolve. Perhaps he gets smarter along the way as he talks to friends and mentors. Fashion designers churn out one collection after another with barely any time in between. Too often their creative passions lack discipline and common sense. Designers get caught up in their own definition of beauty without the benefit of a thoughtful voice of criticism. The moneymen might tell them when they've gone over budget, but not when they've gone around the bend. Fashion, too often, is all id and the wrong kind of ego.

At the Calvin Klein show on Thursday evening, the designer Francisco Costa presented a collection dominated by charcoal gray and forest green. The collection contained several elegant coats, including one in gray with a funnel neckline, as well as luxurious sweaters. But it was also plagued with hobbling skirts, dresses with bulky pleats and trousers with a tapered silhouette. Any woman who has picked up a service magazine in the last decade has read stories detailing how unflattering tapered trousers can be. They have seen the Glamour don'ts. Any pair of pants that is wide through the thighs and narrower at the ankles creates the illusion that the wearer has hips like the side of a barn, which, in case any designer is wondering, is not a look to which most women aspire. A designer who creates such pants would seem to be more intrigued by an aesthetic than by an actual woman.

It is utterly inexcusable for Costa to cut skirts and dresses so narrow at the hem that they hinder a woman's ability to walk. This is not a minor design flaw. It is an affront to woman-as-independent-being. Would a man tolerate not being able to take a full, adult stride across a room? This is the sort of thoughtless design that sends smoke spewing from the ears of consumers.

A dress should not have pleats so ill-placed that they make a woman's rear end look square. This was the problem with a dark green strapless dress that closed Costa's show. It was as cruel a blow to a woman's body as a slap across the face.

The larger problem with this collection, however, is that fall 2007 is not the first time it has been plagued by design flaws caused by treating a woman's body like a design hurdle rather than an inspiration. And yet the owners of Calvin Klein, Phillips-Van Heusen, sit back and watch, seemingly too afraid to trust their own eyes to tell them what is obvious to any observer: Too many of the clothes on the Calvin Klein runway simply don't work.

If the Calvin Klein women's collection were a television show, it would have been canceled seasons ago. But fashion has been more patient, more forgiving and more awestruck by a designer who is both charming and well liked.

The signature collection has never been the moneymaker of a brand. The money has always been in jeans, underwear and other licensed goods. When the company's founder was there, it offered a distinctive, desirable aesthetic. It had the cachet of being a design house. Without Klein, the company is transforming into just a brand. Costa has been unable to stop that evolution.

Zac Posen

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Zac Posen is another designer whose ever-growing stature leaves one puzzled. He has become a phenomenon with standing-room-only shows that draw celebrities, top-of-the-masthead editors and retailers. And yet the clothes are a sweeping display of technical skill without a cohesive point of view. His collections do not unfold in some thoughtful way with one idea building on another. His Thursday night show was a mix of form-fitting dresses, skinny pants and swing jackets. The models streamed out in an incomprehensible jumble and, as usual, he ended with a few evening gowns that are elaborate displays of design ability but without much thought to whether they flatter a woman.

Posen has hip-hop impresario Sean Combs as an investor. And there is the sense that Combs was attracted to Posen not because of the clothes he had produced but because of the press clippings he had accumulated. Posen rose to fame because of his dramatic clothes and his connections. But he has yet to produce a collection that explains his outsize popularity. An editor at his show scratched her head and wondered aloud about his fame: "Why Zac?" (One couldn't help but recall an old "Brady Bunch" episode in which Greg is "discovered" as a new rock star. In the end, circumstances prevent him from becoming another Mick Jagger in a sequined blazer. As his moment in the spotlight ends, he asks the talent agent who chose him: "Why me?" She replies: "Because you fit the suit.")

Posen fits the image of a hot young fashion designer. His clothes are flamboyant. He has famous friends, a big personality, charm and a good patter. He is the fashion equivalent of 'N Sync, but the fashion industry thinks it's found a modern-day Mozart.

Proenza Schouler

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In contrast, the designers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler have the same made-for-Bravo-reality-show demeanor as Posen. They are well connected. They have made famous friends. They are photogenic. Their rising career has been fueled by hype. But they have lived up to it. They have developed a signature sensibility that translates not only on the designer runway, but also in the inexpensive collection they created for Target. With their delineated bust lines, layering and mix of classic shapes with whimsical details, they have begun an interesting dialogue with the consumer.

The fall collection they showed Wednesday afternoon relied on a dark palette of gray and black. It focused on embroidered coats, oversize cardigans, slouchy trousers and black silk dresses adorned with jet beading.

Anne Klein

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It was surprising that the Anne Klein brand decided to bring in designer Isabel Toledo to revive the company's signature label. A respected industry veteran who sells her small, eccentric collection to Barneys New York, Toledo designs clothes filled with personal quirks and flourishes that give them character but also relegate them to the sidelines.

The new job at Anne Klein gives her a more visible pedestal as well as a nice paycheck. She presented her collection Friday afternoon on the west side of Chelsea. It was as far away as one could get from the Garment District and the tents of Bryant Park, which serve as the official home for the fashion shows here. If geography is identity, then the new Anne Klein is out of the mainstream and independent.

The collection is characterized by Toledo's point of view, which is both good and bad. Ostensibly she has done what she was asked, bring her design sensibility to a mainstream brand. But there is a reason Toledo was only selling a handful of frocks out of Barneys. Her work is odd. Her red corduroy coat has tiny peplums dangling over the pockets. A cocoon-like black dress is adorned with tiny metal circles and fabric loops, giving it the disconcerting look of a dominatrix costume. Its embrace of a fashion insider made Anne Klein seem cool, but not necessarily very smart.

Ralph Lauren, Donna Karan

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There are a host of reasons why designers Ralph Lauren and Donna Karan have succeeded, not the least of which is the fact that they entered the fashion market at a time when the competition was not so extreme and the retail climate was more nurturing. But neither has ever allowed their aesthetic desires to overshadow reason.

Lauren is predictable. His collection, shown Friday morning, was filled with tweeds and checks and thick cashmere sweaters. He showed pencil skirts and fitted jackets and tasteful jumpers. And while there was nothing new, there was plenty that was reliable and reassuring. And while calling a designer predictable might be a terrible blow to his ego, he need only look at his bank balance to remind himself that reliability is highly lucrative.

Karan is never predictable but her clothes always make sense. The collection she showed Friday afternoon was not one of her best. She has set the bar quite high for herself. It did not make one swoon over its beauty or over the way it respects the female form. But Karan is always solving problems and in this collection she slips her strapless dresses with their fanlike bustiers over translucent body stockings. The effect is the beautiful seductiveness of a strapless dress without all the hassle of getting the fit just right and the bra just so.

Sometimes problem-solving can be the best kind of creative exercise.