NEW YORK, September 16, 2010
By
At his fashion show after-party at the Lion, Francisco Costa said, "Calvin once told me something brilliant; he said, 'It's not about right or wrong, it's about the right time or the wrong time.'" Well, today was the right time for Costa. He's been practicing his brand of architectural minimalism for seasons. Now that the fashion world has come back around to the less-is-more ethos, he's gone and turned out a superconfident, uncompromising collection that shows everybody else how it's done.
Costa has occasionally seemed more interested in fabric treatments than cut. For Spring he stripped everything superfluous away, focusing on proportion and fit to persuasive effect. He opened with a white racerback tank jumpsuit devoid entirely of embellishment save for a most delicate silk ribbon sashed at the waist. Anybody who ever doubted that minimalism could be sexy was instantly corrected, and the looks that followed had a similarly sensuous simplicity: Take, for instance, a loose-ish silk shift in a shocking shade of coral, or a silk crepe mid-calf dress with a plunging V-neck. A washed white silk tunic and matching cropped pants spliced by a sandy beige leather apron belt had a lot of fans at the after-party. "I saw it and it's all I want to wear," one guest said. "It wiped everything else away." Costa could probably tell you, endorsements don't come any better than that.