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Lucire spring-summer 2005

Zang Toi has come full circle with his learning, presenting one of his most elegant and restrained collections for spring 2005, says Phillip D. Johnson

PHOTOGRAPHED BY JENNIFER GRAYLOCK AND RICHARD SPIEGEL

 

Photographer creditInitial capAST SEASON, Zang Toi took us to Paris in his tribute to the stylish Parisian grande dames of the past and present. It was as beautiful a presentation as I have seen in all my years of attending the fashion shows at the Bryant Park Tents, and very successful in all areas. For spring 2005, he stayed closer to home and drew inspiration from the cool, elegant looks of the rich and famous (of the ’50s and ’60s) who spend the cold winter months at the Round Hills Villas, a vacation paradise on the Caribbean island of Jamaica. The women he evoked for this collection, the American Grandes Dames, were the quintessential beauties of their day, and included Barbara Cushing Mortimer Paley (Babe Paley), one of a member of a loosely assembled group of four stylish and beautiful women that Truman Capute referred to as his 'swans'. The others included Slim Keith, Gloria Guinness, and C. Z. Guest. Mrs Paley was the most exalted, and without a doubt, the most beautiful) and her much-married sisters. These women, and their equally rich and famous friends, travelled the world many times over, but invariably chose to settle, at least for the winter season, in places like Jamaica where they continued to entertain in high style friends such as Noël Coward, and the crème de la crème of Hollywood and the international high society.
   The colour palette he chose—black, white, platinum, 'Jamaican' red, 'West Indian' pink and 'Caribbean Sky' blue—was a mixture of waspy elegance merged with the glamour of old Hollywood, and it worked to perfection. As evidenced by his most recent collections including this one, Mr Toi has come full circle in his learning curve. He is now better able to fight his better nature to go too far over the top, and his restraint in knowing when there is enough frou frou embellishments on a garment served him rather well in this collection.

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