STELLA McCARTNEY’S show held in a 17th-century covered market yesterday drew crowds of onlookers as police and paparazzi swarmed around celebrities including the designer’s father Sir Paul McCartney accompanied by his new girlfriend, Nancy Shevell.
Part of the Gucci luxury goods empire, McCartney’s company made a profit last year and the designer’s upbeat collection reworked many of her familiar masculine/feminine themes.
The contrast of fine lingerie lace inset into silk or velvet dresses with that of shaggy coats of tufted wool was deliberate. The show featured boyfriend and biker jackets and her signature slouchy trousers, some worn with perforated faux leather boots, typical of her playful take on masculine tailoring.
The mood, however, with US and Russian buyers thinner on the ground and the big tradeshow halls are reporting lighter footfalls, is anything but playful.
Only four Irish designers are exhibiting; John Rocha and knitters Eilis Boyle, Lucy Downes and Lainey Keogh. All report that buyers are more demanding and price conscious. “We took a hit, a 50 per cent fall-off in October,” admitted Keogh whose business is 70 per cent US-based. “Since then we have worked hard to review price points and buyers who have turned up have spent. Everything has to look fresh and new. People respond if you are flexible.”
Junya Watanabe’s sombre but beautiful show held in a darkened theatre with only spotlights for illumination and a soundtrack of melancholy Puccini arias, captured the spirit. A designer skilled at elevating the mundane and utilitarian, he took as his central focus the quilted down jacket and transformed it in multifarious ways.
Long circular padded coats with high portrait collars and protectively caped shoulders were elegant and shapely. Worn with draped skirts, leggings and patent brogues, it was a look easily translated back to the street.
By contrast the quilted jackets at Girbaud seemed standard fare as did its predictable line up of reworked parkas, bomber jackets and drawstring tunics.
At Akris, fabrics like silky neoprene were fashioned into curvy urban suits and digitised prints used to create tweed like effects on coats.
Dries Van Noten’s collection was surprisingly downbeat and its strange, discordant colours, squared shoulders and belted camel coats evoked the postwar austerity of the 1940s.