Peter Som

NEW YORK, September 8, 2008
By Laird Borrelli-Persson
How did Peter Som imagine his girl for Spring? Staggering around the desert, being revived at an oasis, watching the sunset, and then meeting her Moroccan lover, he said in a preshow interview. Hot plot, but Som's not in the business of dressing Harlequin romance heroines, and his focused—if somewhat safe—collection stuck to a story line that his customers and maybe even foundering Blass-ites could relate to.

Though Som described this as a "sexier" season than any he's done before, he is still a romantic at heart. The only real frisson of raciness was provided by the Bruno Frisoni shoes; the clothes, as always (a black-and-white minidress, for instance, or a printed-and-beaded coat at the end of the show), remained appealingly ladylike. Some of the skillful Lawrence of Arabia embellishments might have been a bit literal-minded, but there was a youthful, siroccolike freshness to a rose-colored washed-suede shirtdress or a flowing silk seersucker number—pieces that were essentially all-American.