VPL Spring 2010

VPL Spring 2010

Vic­to­ria Bartlett’s clothes were lovely but the neck­laces weren’t. Strange, asym­met­ri­cally ori­ented and artsy — if so. They didn’t cut it. The dress above was paired with an orna­ment that so closely resem­bled kiel­basa, a pop­u­lar Pol­ish sausage, that you’d be have to be care­ful not to leave it around the kitchen at din­ner time. The big chain in day-glo orange, which the designer wore in a more sub­dued color when she took her bow, pos­sessed spirit but was dif­fi­cult to envi­sion wear­ing else­where. MoMA per­haps? A cura­tor might be inclined to hang you on a wall.

I inter­viewed Shaye Strager for my first story for iFash­ion Net­work. Shaye worked with Car­men Marc Valvo styling the jew­elry for his Spring 2010 show; a Fash­ion Week extrav­a­ganza that was broad­cast on the jumbo-tron in Times Square last night. Strager, a fash­ion styl­ist and CBS Trends Tracker, offered some amaz­ing insights into how she approached Valvo’s Urban Jun­gle col­lec­tion. Her com­ments spoke to the times we now live in. Because the clothes were a depar­ture from the twenty-year fash­ion veteran’s clas­si­cally ele­gant aes­thetic, Strager said she wanted his clients to relate to jew­elry in way that was famil­iar, the kinds of pieces they already have in their wardrobe, such as gold hoops, chain neck­laces and ban­gles. I know I’ve pro­nounced the retire­ment of the ban­gle in my pre­vi­ous post, and I stand by it, but I will say that the idea of wear­ing them in rose gold, which was illus­trated on the cat­walk, had me recon­sid­er­ing the con­cept. Any­way I hope you will read my story when iFash­ion Net­work goes live in the next few days. I will keep you posted…