Nathan Jenden

LONDON, February 21, 2009
By Tim Blanks
The show was called "Frostbite," an oblique reference, perhaps, to the collection's chilly dominatrix edge, like Robert Palmer's video vixens filed to a much sharper point. And if that suggests the eighties, then Prince singing "Erotic City" on the soundtrack sealed the deal. Anyway, that's the magic decade for Jenden, to the point where a full-skirted white dress with a lace effect looked like something Cyndi Lauper might have gone formal in. Otherwise, the clothes were mostly black, fitted, and folded to the body. A fishnet body stocking was the foundation for a zippered dress whose precise folds looked like origami, or a trompe l'oeil layering of a man's eveningwear. There was a bandage dress (not for the first time in this eighties-infatuated season) in gray with a hint of Lurex, and a bondage outfit in a strap-draped bird's-eye jacket and pants. Other eighties touches: the huge zips that bifurcated dresses and tops, the multi-pleated pants tapering to the ankle. The mystery of "Frostbite" may have been solved, Rosebud-like, by the arrival of two dresses—a puffball, a trapeze—whose cutouts made the wearers look like giant mutant snowflakes. Yikes!

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