The Sexy Thing

One of Marc Jacobs’ takes on contemporary sexy. (Richard Termine for The New York Times)

I see people were up before the birds to have a whack at the Marc Jacobs show. Such a delicious debate, I might add. (And “rules” about length and quality of comment on the blog? Horrors! Let’s build another prison.) About four minutes into the Jacobs show, after seeing the finale line and then the first of the cut-away dresses in bugle-beaded black silk or jersey over lingerie, I felt he had definitely done something different. All the time I say to young designers, “Give me a new contemporary version of sexiness. Show me something other than a sweetheart neckline, a corseted waist, and an Alaïa homage.” I’ve been waiting, and not seeing it. So when I saw the way Jacobs had stripped down those dresses, expressing a natural élan as much as a silhouette that any person can draw upon, he had my vote.

Of course the collection had a lot of other things going on it besides the sexy thing, like the sweet mouse prints and the odd “too small” shoes that at first confused people in the audience, but I twigged to those opening dresses and the black “stole” T-shirt with the black shantung shorts. How great would it be to see someone wear that on a red carpet? Bill Cunningham once said to me after a Yohji Yamamoto show that included some beautiful, spare black jersey dresses, “I’m always hoping I see someone at a party in a dress like that, but I never do.” We long to change a landscape dominated by banal, thoughtless choices.

I completely agree with pbw that, while Yamamoto and Margiela have done similar styles and offered similar commentaries on our celeb-rule culture, Jacobs has a different kind of authority and influence. That’s just a realistic observation, not a comment on the creativity of the others. And I did not, at least in this Jacobs, see a reference to the last Comme des Garcons show, apart from the big hair. Tell me I’m wrong, but I didn’t see it.

A creation by Calvin Klein. (Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times)

As for Francisco Costa’s collection for Calvin Klein, I thought it was pretty strong, a logical (maybe too logical?) continuation from his sleek fall show. The colors—egg-wash shades of blue, green and taupe—were exceptional, unlike anything we’ve seen in New York. I wished for some of the easy sparkle of his resort collection; at times the clothes in yesterday’s show looked too studied, as simple as they were.

My main beef, though, was with the casting of the models. All of them were white and had hair of a uniform length. You can’t tell women they should have individual style and then show them models who all looked essentially and blandly the same. The casting suggests a peculiar myopia: the clothes are more important than the women who will actually wear them. And let’s not forget that Calvin Klein has a legacy of using models with a variety of different faces, bodies and ethnic backgrounds. Iman, Cindy, Linda, the great Christy…