Natalia Alaverdian’s back-to-front shirting, pants, and skirts in Spanish silk lamé were lovely in their intensity and difference and the biggest departure in a collection that was otherwise business as usual. Her showroom was packed with a pre-fall that majored on the key inside-out and upside-down shapes that have become a signature; trompe-l’oeil skirts that look like pants, aka “spants,” squidgily sectioned bags which (whisper it) rather prefaced Bottega Veneta’s smash hit intrecciato iterations, and voluminousness.
Alaverdian never saw a back she didn’t want to turn front, and sometimes this dedication to inversion can feel a little rigid: Jackets turned inside out with wraparound closures were prime examples here. Yet basque-topped pants, or corseted shirts, flat-fronted black courtier shoes with white pantyhose, and tailored draped dresses in suiting fabric all added up to an intelligent loopiness. “The whole collection is based on this deconstruction of tailored pieces,” said the designer. What she does she does in her own way and well. A pleather double-breasted jacket that wasn’t a jacket (the designer said), the ice skater-y paillette pieces, and the lamé—Michelle Pfeiffer in Scarface after a profound re-evaluation of her life choices and direction—were the highlights of a typically twisted A.W.A.K.E collection.
