Peter Som

NEW YORK, February 4, 2008
By Laird Borrelli-Persson
Peter Som was in an eccentric mood for Fall, having found himself attracted to the "quirky, dark, and idiosyncratic" qualities of Diane Arbus' photographs of downtown New Yorkers. "They're reality-based and fantasy-oriented," the designer explained. Much the same could be said of his collection, which ran the gamut from attractive (if a tad vintage-y) cocktail dresses, rendered in sumptuous materials like mille-feuille organza and duchesse satin, to luxurious separates. These included full skirts and slouchy Donegal tweed pants, sweater jackets and distressed tweed toppers, and Chantilly lace-sleeved print blouses—many of them worn under extravagant furs (no signs of recession chez Som).

If the collection had a bit of a grab-bag feel and occasionally found the designer treading on familiar ground, it also had plenty of desirable moments. Som knows his customer, and she's not going to be lacking a wish list. He gave his clothes a compelling touch-me quality by creating texture with beads and feathers and autumnal tweeds. His inventive palette (cerise, lemon, navy, plum) was the result of his imagining what Arbus' black-and-white photos would look like in color. The "skewed" skirts with layered hems and buttoned-on panels of cloth may have been too studied in their quirkiness, but a mismatched blouse-and-skirt ensemble topped with a cheetah-print coat had an irresistible Grey Gardens-style charm.