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February 5, 2008 11:39 am
“She’s sort of like, the bad-girl working girl,” says Christian Stroble, summing up the ethos of Eventide’s Fall 2008 collection. Emphasis on working: As Stroble explains, he and his Eventide co-designer, Sarah Spratt, have been doing some deep thinking about how the sorry state of the economy ought to translate into their clothes. Thus, tonight’s Eventide runway show will reveal a plethora of “recession-proof,” color-blocked separates—something of a departure for the young label, which has earned fans such as Natalie Portman and singer Nicole Atkins on the back of their edgily gamine dresses. “The color-blocking comes out of our fascination with Constructivism,” Stroble says, “though we’ve stayed away from the traditional Malevich palette and gone for lots of grays, burgundies, and teals instead.” The Constructivist reference tracks with some of the more Marxist ideas influencing the collection—Diego Rivera would probably look fondly on the silk print comprising tiny gears and other machine parts that Spratt designed; elsewhere, oversize studding and boxy jackets look back to the anti-Thatcher style of early-eighties Britain. Nevertheless, the collection’s nipped-waist wool dresses wouldn’t look altogether out of place at the office—provided that the usual overhead fluorescents are replaced with film noir lighting. “We wanted the dresses to feel a little subversive,” Stroble acknowledges. “But we wanted them to be elegant and wearable, too.” Even malcontents have jobs, in other words.
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