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Lucire fall-winter 2004

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ABOVE AND LEFT:
Marc Bouwer: exquisite in every way and close to perfect, but the show’s duration let it down. BELOW: Bill Blass by Michael Volbracht.

   Enough have been said about the excruciating length of Michael Volbracht’s fall 2004 Bill Blass presentation (80 looks!) in other publications so I won’t rehash that here. Instead I will say this: this was one instance where one’s proximity to the exit was a blessing, not a sign that your star is fading and there are no more front-row seats in your future. We all had such high hopes that the emerging excellence that marked Mr Volbracht’s début collection will be continued and that was certainly the perception at the beginning of the show.
Instead of joining the negative pile-up, let’s say everything that went wrong was fixable. He had a cadre of mature models walking the runway. But sometimes a particular model seemed to be wearing the wrong look
It was a very good beginning staring with some very beautifully cut camel plaid clutch and window-pane double-breasted coats, skirt suits with golden sable and Russian sable trims, and a quartet of suits that was simply perfect for the season. Could any woman go wrong wearing his camel–grey Alpaca jacket with flecked flannel trouser or his espresso–black wool plaid trouser suit? Not very likely. He hit upon the right note of youthfulness and creativity with his rust coloured corduroy jacket paired with a rust–multi-wool plaid kilt over a cypress (green) mock turtle-neck and Ai in a rust–loden wool tattersall pantsuit with an embroidered taffeta vest. And then it started going wrong.
   Again here, instead of joining the negative pile-up, let’s just say everything that went wrong was fixable. Once again, he had a cadre of mature models walking the runway with their present day counterparts. But sometimes a particular model (say, a younger one) seemed to be wearing the wrong look (e.g. a look that is a little bit more matronly that youthful). Sometimes it was the other way around. Sometimes you can’t win for losing. I love you, Pat Cleveland, but darling, this is 2004; you don’t have the luxury of hogging the runway as if you have all the time in the world to get the job done. The show virtually grinded to an halt whenever she was on the runway, with the younger girls lapping her in their bid to show the look and get backstage and change for their next look. And then were the times when it appeared that Mr Volbracht literally went back into the Bill Blass archives and traced over the sketches and presented it as new. These looks were extremely dated and I have to wonder who will be wearing them come August.

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Richard Spiegel/Lucire

 

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