There are designers who are keeping their concepts simple and classical for fall: Carmen Marc Valvo, Carolina Herrera, Douglas Hannant, Luca Luca, Narciso Rodriguez, Oscar de la Renta, Bradley Bayou for Halston and Pamella Roland, as reviewed by Phillip D. Johnson

Photographed by Cheryl Gorski/www.cherylgorski.com and Richard Spiegel
Pamella Roland runway photographs provided by Joan Deignan of DFPR

Bradley Bayou for Halston

ASHION IS FICKLE, and once venerable, respected labels are apt to die a slow, agonizingly public death. But in the right designer's hands, a design label can be reborn and become as constant as one season following the other. That was the case when designer Bradley Bayou joined Halston as Creative Director in December 2002. In February, Mr Bayou returned to New York with the most perfect jewel box of a collection inspired by ‘America's natural terrain, the fall foliage and changing leaves of Northern New England [and] the white birch trees and snowy landscapes of Aspen.’
   Mr Bayou, a graduate of Phillips Andover Academy, the University of Texas, and Dallas's Southern Methodist University, is a painter and sculptor whose work has been exhibited at galleries in New York, Washington, DC and Los Angeles. He is also the first to tell you that he is a self-taught designer who views the Halston name as ‘probably one of the most important American names in fashion of all time.
   ‘When I was younger, I'd go to the library and read books about fashion,’ he told a fellow writer for Cotton Inc's web site, www.cottoninc.com. ‘[T]he three designers that influenced me the most were Norman Norell, Cristobal Balenciaga and Halston. … Halston designed clean, sexy, American clothes … My designs are very similar—architectural, sculptural and sexy.’
   Continuing in this vein, he further remarked, ‘I believe perfect design is a perfect balance. No one has a perfect body. I take my design concepts and apply them to real people. Sometimes I call myself an illusionist. I dress all different kinds of women, from Halle Berry and Debra Messing to Oprah and Queen Latifah. I want to make all women look beautiful no matter what their size or shape. … I'm not an élitist, I want everyone to wear Halston and look great.’
   His 17-piece eveningwear collection for fall was breathtakingly beautiful, a masterful work of limitless imagination and creative engineering. Mr Bayou recreated the elements of fall literally—as in his silk taffeta falling leaf gown—and figuratively—as in his five layer metallic organza ball gown. In between all of this, he simply moved got on with the business of creating magic on a small scale.
   I loved his silver embroidered silk party dress (with taupe leather bodice) because it allows the wearer to affect being a virginal innocent and a major hottie at the same time. Any woman would be thrilled to bits to wear his ivory super-sheared mink coat with vintage crystal accents over a wool crêpe mini-dress and his ivory wool crêpe pant suit with pleated jacket. The suit is just simply one of the best all-round pieces I have seen in a long while. Even when he ramp up the glamour factor—as he did with his sterling sliver sequin- and crystal- embroidered ($17,000 worth of glamour!) and silver iridescent loop pailette gowns—he kept the silhouette simple.

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