DESIGNER Narciso Rodriguez is a bit of a conundrum. While he's often considered a minimalist, he refuses to fit comfortably in that box, pushing the boundaries of that broad term. Tonight's collection was a perfect example of how far reaching one theme can take you, if you're willing to dig deep enough to its core.
This season, there was a shattered, broken feeling to the designer's work as if he took simple concepts and fragmented them beyond recognition. The first look was a simple enough jumping off point: white pants and a black top belted with a stiff piece of fabric that resembled a demented cummerbund or a karate gi. Next was a sheer white top over a black bra and paired with a black skirt with thick, white edging, disjointedly structured to create a graphic design. From here, Rodriguez's pieces grew more complicated in their assemblage, but they didn't boast it. Instead, they quietly enveloped the models, with their pastel-painted hair, and shielded them in their rigid, interconnecting shells.
Where the designer succeeded most was in his marbleized patterns, including robin egg blue, a pixelated coat, and some asymmetrically languid shirt-dresses. Jolts of tomato and sea foam were seen throughout and kept the collection's energy afloat when, at times, it skirted with becoming too self-aware of its conceptual nature. Some beautiful coats, the louche pants, and the more straightforward dresses were appealing and wearable and still had a refracted sense of intelligence. But balancing the head and the heart has been a specialty of Rodriguez's, so rest assured that somewhere beneath the clinical calculations of such a controlled collection, the heart of an artist lives, looking to breathe a richness of spirit - a medatative Rothko-like spirituality, even - into his work.
SEE THE NARCISO RODRIGUEZ SHOW ARCHIVE