Natalia Alaverdian sat me down at a table covered with prints from her lookbook to explain that her collection was ’70s, ’90s, Soviet sci-fi, American West, preppy, sexy, slightly Twin Peaks–esque, with a touch British equestrian posh. But what I wanted to know first was: Why no show?
The answer was that most of her models at her London runway debut last season had evaporated last-minute to go to Gucci. She’d pleaded not to be put on the final day of the London schedule—again—but no dice. So, for reasons of both cost and control, there was no A.W.A.K.E. in London. She plans to show—properly, not another appointment like this—in Paris for Spring 2019.
Instead, Alaverdian shot this collection both on set and on location at the Russian State Library in Moscow. Her ruched, hand-tooled, chisel-toed cowboy boots and integrated-sock grandpa derbies were the foundation of a collection that flirted cleverly with utilitarian quirk. Deconstructed trenches, backward jackets, tops with integrated gloves (un-buttonable at the inner arm for phone use and dining), plus loose knits with similar arm openings were some of the other slyly unconventional pieces here. Full skirts were plentifully un-buttonable: the better, Alaverdian said, to allow the wearer to calibrate her preferred level of preppy versus sexy. There were a lot of boot-cut denim and corduroy pants worn under trucker-Western jacket hybrids, and a fun long brown corduroy coat overlaid with chevrons of fake fur based on Alaverdian’s memory of a coat once rocked by her grandmother. For a customer in search of sensually conceived, thought-through oddity, A.W.A.K.E. is worth looking at.
