Fashion designers are a fickle lot, flirting with a trend one season and tossing it out the next. But for spring 2006 it seems they have finally made a commitment: They’ve lost their hearts to the dress.
Designers sent their models sauntering down the runway in dresses – simple shifts, sporty shirtwaists, flirty sundresses and what’s shaping up to be the season’s pick, the empire waist.
“It’s naive and sweet, yet at the same time it has a sensuality because it shows your breasts,” said Donna Karan, who served up several empire styles in her DKNY collection.
Not only do designers like Oscar de la Renta and Carolina Herrera endorse the dress for their rich fashion hounds, but young contemporary lines like Cynthia Steffe and Chaiken also prominently featured dresses in their collections.
Front-row trendsetters have already gotten the message. Ashley Judd wore a plum-colored print dress to a breakfast launching her new fragrance for American Beauty. Bernadette Peters arrived at the Bill Blass show in a floaty aqua number. Even many of the fashion moths fluttering
around the tents at Bryant Park this week still are wearing their summer frocks and Manolo sandals. (The unseasonably hot weather – temperatures hovering in the high 80s and humidity to match – has helped fuel the trend.)
Karan attributes the popularity of the dress to its ease and practicality. “You throw it on and you’re set,” said the designer, who previewed her DKNY collection Monday.
Indeed, what could be easier for the time-starved working woman than to toss on DKNY’s crisp black tank dress or a crepe de chine safari style, grab her bag and go?
The idea of one-piece dressing is a welcome change after years of complicated layering that required a fashion editor’s eye to coordinate the camisoles, shrunken cardigans and trousers. The popularity of last summer’s peasant skirt no doubt gave designers the confidence to go forward with soft, feminine looks.
Not that the new dresses are a throwback to the fussy ensembles worn with hats and gloves in the 1950s. The current variety of dresses ranging from bare, not-so-innocent to Jackie O classic sheaths certainly will appeal to twentysomething fashionistas who were raised wearing jeans and T-shirts.
“I see the young editors come in and they’re all wearing skirts and dresses,” said Michael Vollbracht, who is designing the Bill Blass collection. “They make your legs look good.”
No kidding. When two of Vollbracht’s models vamped for the cameras wearing flirty gingham confections, photographers greeted them with wolf whistles.
Feminine dresses are a signature of Oscar de la Renta. The front-row size-2 ladies adored his slender styles in black and white boucle and red linen, impeccably accessorized with high-heeled sandals and elegant bags.
Carolina Herrera’s fans go to her for a little sizzle and she didn’t disappoint them with her unexpected combinations like sky blue and brown, and eye-catching details such as appliquéd flowers and wide, colorful sashes.
The young woman who wants a chic daytime look that doesn’t scream “mumsy” is going to find it at Cynthia Steffe. Her granite linen dress with a scoop neck, nipped waist and knee-grazing skirt managed to be both sexy and classy at the same time.
Even Jeff Mahshie, whose Chaiken collection is known for contemporary separates, filled his runway with pretty, full-skirted dresses and simple shirtwaists in shades of black, gray and face powder pink. His cropped jackets, voile shirts and slim pants looked easy and fresh on the lithe young models, but it was his understated, strapless organza dresses that stole the show.
