Alice + Olivia Spring 2018 Ready-To-Wear...Fashionweekly...On Fow24news.com

The Alice + Olivia presentation always draws a massive crowd. For the glam flock that attends, decked out in their platform shoes, bug-eye shades, and brightly colored monochrome suits, designer Stacey Bendet is the queen of Fashion Week....
It was difficult to move through the space that housed the designer’s Spring 2018 collection due to eager, iPhone-wielding fan girls that could be heard saying, “Oh my god, is that Stacey!?” And while at first glance the clothes and the vignettes didn’t seem to have a through line, Bendet did have an explanation.

This season, she dove into the history behind New York’s iconic Chelsea Hotel and tapped a few cool young artists to help her out. There were sets designed by Lola Schnabel, Lucy Sparrow, Jemima Kirke, Francesca DiMattio, and Angelica Hicks. Scout Willis was on hand to sing acoustic in what Bendet called “the music room.” For this space, she even brought in an original piano from the Chelsea, one scrawled with the words Sid Was Here on the rack.

The bohemian patchwork and neon floral dresses in the “lobby” area and the Janis Joplin–inspired garden were the most Chelsea Hotel–appropriate wares of the whole bunch. One of the most striking of these blossoming prints came on a billowy, breezy ruffled dress and originated from a painting of a petalless flower by Schnabel. Bendet turned Sparrow’s woven bodega goods into adorable little clutches and designed pajama sets stamped with palm trees à la Hicks. Some of the sequins and beading on gowns and party dresses felt better suited for somewhere else, say, a fancy wedding at the Plaza, rather than an artist gathering at the Chelsea.

Also a bit off-theme but still admirable was a hallway in the middle of the space whose walls were painted with the word feminist, featuring models dressed in suffragette white.

As a whole, the Spring collection was a cuter, Bendet-imagined version of the hippy-fied New York landmark, one that certainly made the Alice + Olivia audience inside go wild.