Cavalli

Last Spring I had a tonsillectomy and was stuck miserably in bed for two weeks. Luckily, it was the same week that all the Fall fashion shows appeared on style.com. I watched every single one, but one that I watched over and over was Roberto Cavalli's. The inspiration for the show seemed so sweeping it was hard to catch a theme. Many of the Fall shows seemed obvious or tedious, but Cavalli's was so out of left field. Is it Asian? Russian? Flapper? Old Hollywood? 1970s Glam? There was no pigeonholing it.

My absolute favorite piece in the collection is a kimono-like, fur-collared coat that is so regal and stunning it looks almost kingly, something you might expect Henry VIII to wear with white tights and a floppy hat.



At any rate, this coat had me in a panic of deja vu. I could not figure out where I'd seen it before. Finally I placed it. It was in an old McCall's from the 1920s on a model wearing a little Cloche hat and a beautiful, silky robe-like coat with a large fur collar. I have tried to find this picture, but I can't. This was the closest I could find:




Seeing that coat in his show made me so excited and instantly took me back to my childhood when I was poring over old magazines in awe of a glamourous era long gone. Cavalli inspired that same awe of glamour in me as I lay post-op and incapacitated. It takes a designing genius to make a girl, incapacitated by pain and high on painkillers that aren't painkilling, have such a wonderful moment of inspiration and beauty.