NYFW welcomed back designer Zac Posen with open arms at his homecoming Lincoln Center show this season, his first in New York after defecting to Paris Fashion Week over the last year.
And it was a marked change from his previous New York shows – bustling talked-about affairs involving 1000-plus guests and over-the-top celebrity-studded front rows. For spring/summer 2012, the razzle-dazzle glitz and glam was reserved entirely for the romantic floor-sweeping gowns, which took to the catwalk in the modest surrounds of the little-used Avery Fisher Hall balcony.
Featuring precise tailoring and stunning, body-skimming cuts, Posen’s offerings for the new season swept through the outdoor space to an intimate gathering of just a couple of hundred magazine editors, the only apparent starlet in tow one Miss Kelly Osbourne.
Model Coco Rocha, in her only professional outing of the season, opened spring 2012 for Posen – and did so with superlative grace, it’s not for nothing that she enlisted Posen to design her wedding dress. It was all old-world, silver-screen glamour, restricted to only cocktail and eveningwear, suggesting a sensibility more akin to Paris than New York – perhaps indicating the indelible mark the city of romance has left on his designs.
The sumptuous deep jewel and earth toned dresses, almost all cascading to the floor, had an intriguingly ‘Noir’ cinematic quality – particularly evident in the standout bondage-inspired black gown with straps, mesh, and subtle flesh-baring cut-outs. However, it was the luxurious intricately embellished evening gowns in duchess satin and delicate tulle with bustier detailing and mermaid style skirt, that well and truly stole the show – just the thing to appeal to his many avant-garde A-list fans.
SEE THE ZAC POSEN SHOW ARCHIVE