The confusion I felt upon leaving the show is even lapsing into this article! Does one start with the extremely perplexing color choices, the overuse of adornments and embroidery, the plethora of different fabric choice or the inability to decipher which woman Roland was designing for? While the collection dominated with the Hollywood glamorous woman (think Katharine Hepburn) with floor length ball gowns only to be worn to an award ceremony, it also gave reference to the masculine female with tuxedo pants worn under floor length high collar tailored jackets. Also included in the collection concept was the young working woman, looking for an easily transformable day to night dress. Which one will win on the buying floor for Roland?
The use of embroidery, fur, sequin, bead, feather, lace, tassel and print lead to a daring comparison of such female costumes designed for films from the James Bond Movies: From Russia with Love, Golden Eye, Tomorrow Never Dies; basically any film referenced around the Eastern European and Asian border where it is a common to dress with an overdone state of mind.
The fabric ranged from metallic brocade, to lace, to velvet, to organza, to silk, to wool and to chiffon. Colors flew all over the map. Plums, crimsons, camels, blacks, grays, greens, whites, silvers, gold; any piece in the collection could have been changed to a different color with no notice of the alteration. Overall, some of the collection is perfectly wearable when off the over stylized runway and individually placed on a hanger, but for most of it, the collection never really came together to form a solid relationship with the concept Roland had in place. The show ended with a red silk coat ending at the waist front to flow into a 3 foot train in the back. The coats hem was lined with dozens of hand painted pink chrysanthemums, and for that matter, it was certainly a piece to end a rather bewildering collection as it was entirely different from every other piece on the runway.
