By now, neon is far from original, but no one worked the trend with as much finesse as Proenza Schouler’s Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez did with their Spring 2011 collection. While this season’s collection didn’t quite bring that same neon bang, it brought in pops of brightly saturated shades of orange, red, and turquoise, amidst a darker brown, black, and burned yellow palette making for some stunningly eye-catching Fall 2011 looks that only got more captivating as the show progressed – that is, aside from a duo of fringe skirts that, mid-way, stole the show.
McCollough and Hernandez have a remarkable ability to mix prints and textures, and this season brought both of those elements back with the notable addition of velvet and fringe – their inspiration was, after all, the West and it came complete with bold arrowhead necklaces and the sure to be “it” bag of Fall 2011, a tribal-western jacquard PS1.
There’s so much painstaking effort in everything the Proenza boys do that it’s hard not to find something beautiful in nearly every look that made its way down the runway. The designers’ real gift, however, is that they can make even the most highly engineered (and strikingly original) fabrics look effortless, a point that was underscored by the loosely pulled back, natural hair look created by Frederic Fekkai’s Paul Hanlon – easy-cool glamour, which made it all the more fitting that Chloe Sevigny was front row at the show.
The east-meets-west-meets-tribal theme that pervaded the collection translated into the lineup’s fringed skirts, chunky knits, boxy tuxedo jackets, loosely slung cropped pants, and into more velvet garments done in swiveling, colorful geometric patterns than one could count. It’s no easy feat to make velvet and fringe look sophisticated, but the boys pulled it off and then some.
Photos: Vincenzo Grillo, IMAXtree.
