Review: Kate Spade serves up youthful glamour — topped off with a turban
Reporting from New York — The sophomore Kate Spade New York collection under the creative direction of Nicola Glass, presented here Friday, is the perfect example of how to baby-step a beloved brand away from its roots — to genuinely move it forward — while paying homage to all that came before.
Shades of pale pink and lilac purple were everywhere (including the pink-carpeted runway), but were joined by deeper hues including eggplant, burgundy and brown. There was a palpable sense of we-can-do-anything optimism in the collection, telegraphed by way of high-waisted, wide-legged pants (which have been all over the runways the first few days of New York Fashion Week) rendered in fluid silks and wide-wale corduroy (if there’s a fabric out there that better embodies a sense of boundless optimism I’d like to meet it), some with matching wide-lapel jackets. And the spade motif, which Glass tweaked to be a four-petal flower in her debut for the label last season, is still present, reimagined anew in an assortment of prints and hardware.
But the real focus-pulling prints were animal in nature — colorful leopard spots on knit dresses, brocade suits, double-breasted jackets and even turbans (more on those below), splotched cow prints on handbags and snakeskin prints on below-the-knee lace-up boots.
“This season, I started by imagining raiding an insanely glamorous woman’s closet, and the rich, eclectic mix you’d find that you could make your own,” Glass wrote in the show notes. “For fall 2019, I was inspired by the idea of a woman’s closet and the thought of where clothes end up rather than where they originated.”
The go-to accessory for an insanely glamorous woman (as anyone who has seen “Auntie Mame” will tell you) is the turban, and in Glass’ hands what once seemed fusty feels fresh. Accessorizing all but a handful of looks, they were served up in the same colors and prints found throughout the rest of the collection and lent a feeling of youthful yet sophisticated glamour to the whole affair.
For more musings on all things fashion and style, follow me at @ARTschorn
