Terri Stevens Fall 2009

S5 contestant Terri Stevens presented her fall 2009 collection at Brooklyn Fashion Week and we find ourselves hesitant to say anything because we didn't want to start the week off by being so negative. But kittens, it's just not to our taste. More importantly, it doesn't look particularly polished, which is surprising, because her competition work was usually very polished. Some of the elements or pieces are downright bizarre, like the sequined pants and the weird ruffly/pleaty things that seem to be haphazardly stuck here and there. Then there are the ...um, crotch treatments that make the models look like they're wearing jockstraps. We like the harlequin check jackets, but that's about it. We're disappointed, to say the least. We liked a lot of her competition work and assumed that she would produce a polished collection of RTW separates, but who's ready to wear this stuff?

[Photos: WireImage]

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Isaac Mizrahi Fall 2009 Collection

Let's check in with Miss Mizrahi again, shall we, kittens?

Style sez:

"Isaac Mizrahi titled his Fall show "Smile" and sent looks with names like Cosy, Xanaxer, and Stressless Dress down the runway to an original jazz score by the Bad Plus. Accessorized with Schiaparelli-referencing handbag hats, models paraded out in plaid kilts and sarongs, chunky knits, and gowns (some with truly odd exposed underpinnings)."

This is a wildly uneven collection. It's like bipolarism in clothing form. There's a lot here that we really like but there's also a lot that just goes plain wrong. We love the colors and the use of plaids and we love the jackets and coats and shimmery metallic pieces. The hats are just plain silly and some of those more haphazard-looking pieces are looking a bit "homeless chic" to us. Still, one thing that always comes through with his work is his clear love of clothing and what he can do with it. Despite the uneven quality of the collection, there's probably something here for almost every woman. Maybe that's why it's so uneven.

[Photos: Getty Images]


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Mary Katrantzou Fall 2009 Collection

“A woman who doesn’t wear perfume has no future”

Coco Chanel

We absolutely adored this collection the second we laid eyes on it. It's designer Mary Katrantzou's first runway collection for London Fashion Week. Known for her use of prints, Katrantzou described her influences as "the refractive quality of my mother's glass perfume bottles" and you should have no problem seeing that in the trompe l’oeil effect of these clothes. Some might say she got too literal in her interpretation but these are dresses the likes of which we've never seen before and that's enough to win us over. They're not just unique; they're uniquely beautiful. She also designs jewelry and you can see the pieces in this collection. Her jewelry is large, geometric and clunky and the effect with these dresses is you can't tell where the jewelry ends and the dress begins.

[Photos: firstVIEW]

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Alexander McQueen Fall 2009

It's McQueen, darlings!

Style:

"Alexander McQueen may be the last designer standing who is brave or foolhardy enough to present a collection that is an unadulterated piece of hard and ballsy showmanship. The heated arguments that broke out afterward were testament to that. There were those who found his picture of women with sex-doll lips and sometimes painfully theatrical costumes ugly and misogynistic. Others—mainly young spectators who haven't been thrilled by the season's many sensible pitches to middle-aged working women—were energized by the sheer spectacle, as well as the couture-level drama in the execution of the clothes.

It was certainly meant as a last-stand fin de siècle blast against the predicament in which fashion, and possibly consumerism as a whole, finds itself. The set was a scrap heap of debris from the stages of McQueen's own past shows, surrounded by a shattered glass runway. The clothes were, for the most part, high-drama satires of twentieth-century landmark fashion: parodies of Christian Dior houndstooth New Look and Chanel tweed suits, moving through harsh orange and black harlequinade looks to revisited showstoppers from McQueen's own archive."

We're with the folks at style.com. It makes for quite a spectacle watching these looks come down the runway, but there's something a little ugly and dark about the whole thing. We're not going to go so far as to accuse him of misogyny but the whole show looks like a bad mood in clothing form. We love the houndstooth pieces and the red and black striped dress with the skirt that goes over the shoulder; we also like the prints that start off looking like houndstooth and end up being a flight of Escher birds and, because he's McQueen, there's always some interesting structural pieces to look at. Still, some of these pieces - especially the hats - are bordering on parody. Maybe that was the point.

Watch the show:

[Photos: Getty Images/WireImage - Video: YouTube]


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