The award-draped Loden Dager collective -or at least the trio who took a bow for this collection : Alex Galan, Oliver Helden, and Paul Marlow- looked back to another New York threesome for inspiration. They wondered what Cy Twombly, Robert Rauschenberg, and Jasper Johns, the art world's most mesmerizing ménage à trois (Lagerfeld-Jondeau-Giabiconi is another one more in the public eye now), would have worn when they arrived in Manhattan in the fifties. Starving artists ? Well, thrift would be a concern. So would durability. And grant them a little aesthetics leeway in their color scheme. It's a lovely narrative, but it didn't necessarily make for a persuasive show. The resolutely low-key clothes -plaid shirt, V-neck knit, corduroys, a cardigan with leather-covered buttons- had a professorial tinge, though a closer look revealed subtle treatments like triple-dyeing and bleaching. While the knits were cashmere, luxe was scarcely the point here. These were real clothes. Dull on the catwalk, but still, you could imagine a style-conscious constituency being seduced on the shop floor.
