Tome Review in Fall 2015 RTW

View More Tome Fall 2015 RTW

For their fall 2015 collection for Tome, designers Ryan Lobo and Ramon Martin looked to two women, both distinctly accomplished and entirely unrelenting in their (markedly different) pursuits: Belgian dancer and choreographer Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and, well, fashion designer Donna Karan. “It’s never an architectural or abstract reference for us,” said Martin (which is all good and well; despite the elegance of some collections’ references, at the end of the day most women really don’t want to look like buildings). “It’s the air of both of these women that we’ve taken—how they approach their work and what challenges them as creatives, what they strive for. They’re tenacious women, obviously, when it comes to their craft. Very strong with a very, very feminine hand, and the same sort of approach to shaping their work to a woman’s needs or a woman’s form.”

De Keersmaeker’s costumes, specifically, came into play, as seen in the loose-fitting, open-backed little black dress with swirling balletic skirt that closed the show or the primly starched white shirtdresses that opened it, but it was Karan’s banker stripe and quintessentially “New York” urbanity that carried through, whether it was her banker-stripe shirting (here reinterpreted as a long, lean shirtdress, or a mandarin-collared style paired with an A-line patch-pocketed patent leather skirt) or her 1992 “Presidential” ad campaign photographed by Peter Lindbergh. “This is not a fantasy,” said Martin of Karan’s revolutionary nineties designs. “This is an approach to a real woman’s life. It’s as full and intense and full of responsibility as the President of the United States.” And there were clothes for that on display today: sumptuous, double-faced camel coats and vests cinched with thick white patent belts; stripy, silky frocks and embroidered gauzy ones; long knits worn over longer lace and under short patent and felted jackets with patch-front pockets. Long, bias-cut silk dresses slit nearly to the hip were paired with those jackets, too, in a neon take on butter yellow and black. There was even a fluffy pink whimsy of a coat, which sauntered down the runway between the sleeker looks. “It’s nice seeing these two different forces that have some kind of synchronicity that you would never associate with each other,” said Lobo at a preview of the collection in early February. “When you think of Belgian artistry you don’t think of Donna Karan. We like that meld.” We’re guessing their customers will too.