United Bamboo

NEW YORK, September 8, 2007
By Nicole Phelps
Thuy Pham and Miho Aoki's enigmatic show notes cited Herzog and de Meuron, but if architecture was the duo's starting point, it only really came across in glimpses: in the origami detailing on the waistband of a flaring skirt, say, or at the neckline of the smock dress that opened the show, or on the front and back of a cropped, button-front jacket that was strangely heavy for Spring. As for the rest, it looked like a standard cross section of United Bamboo's reinvented classics: the seersucker suit, the shirtwaist dress, a windbreaker not in nylon but in luxe patent leather.

"You get what you came for," said one editor on her way into United Bamboo's show, referring to the predictability that has caused some to lose interest in the line. And though there was some on-trend news here—high-waisted, rolled-hem shorts worn with a prim golden Lurex puff-sleeve blouse; a flaring skirt teamed with a contrast-collar button-down shirt—the collection did feel rather flat.