Friday, September 23, 2011 at 2:50PM By: Cynthia Anderson Fashion Feature: IMPROVD Spring 2012
image:S.Whittle for Style Wylde
The enormous crowd waiting to gain access to the IMPROVD Spring 2012 presentation at Lincoln Center was buzzing with excitement and giddiness as the PR team inside the Box put the last touches on the staging. This fact seemed to bewilder those waiting just a few yards away for the far more mainstream Tibi collection showing in the same time slot. But what the mainstream Tibi crowd didn't understand is that IMPROVD is quickly becoming an 'it' brand to watch among the avant-garde fashion fans and for good reason; the designers are turning out some of the most creative work of the season.
image:S.Whittle for Style Wylde
Using parrots (yes, parrots!) with their brightly colored feathers and sharp beaks as a starting point, the IMPROVD team, Valentino Vettori and Sam Ben-Avraham, created a collection that was highly conceptual, expertly crafted and utterly unsettling. Completely devoid of the Disney film esthetic one might expect from a collection based around these famously talkative birds, the pieces conjured up images of primordial (or maybe post apocalyptic) predators, through the use of a blackened color palette and heavy cage-like woven details added to otherwise light-weight materials. Long dresses and skirts were multi-colored and modeled, much like the fluffy feathers on a parrots neck, while the short looks were highly structured and almost restrictive in design.
image:S.Whittle for Style Wylde
Shown in three rotating acts, in which the looks were divided into color families "Red", "Blue" and "Green" each matched with a mini-film of Parrots flying across a night sky-scape, the presentation itself seemed to baffle a few on lookers, some of whom walked out of the box just minutes after it all began. But early exiters hurried back into the space as soon as word got out that there was far more to see from IMPROVD, making it clear that no one wanted to miss a second of the fashion theater being performed.
image:S.Whittle for Style Wylde
For more information on IMPROVD visit the label's official web home.
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