Esteban Cortazar Spring 2018 Ready-To-Wear.....Fashionweekly...On Fow24news.com

Esteban Cortazar doesn’t just explain a collection, he takes you on a free association–style guided tour of seemingly random yet personal references. Suspended within the lattice that connected these 30 singular looks were the patterns of butterfly wings; a disco club in Cali, Colombia; fragments of his recent collaboration with Colette; salsa dancing; his five-week summer vacation among family in Ibiza.......
Werner Herzog’s Aguirre, the Wrath of God; and a sincere desire to reflect diversity (check out his casting).

It’s safe to assume that guests—and you, as readers—would pick up on some of this, but not all, and Cortazar would never expect that of you. He’s far more concerned with what the clothes express, which is why he opened the show as an exhalation of white poplin, sheer veiling, and textural knits in preparation for a heady immersion into seductive alternative suiting and luxe sportswear, followed by a final celebration of graphic impact and slinky form. All the while, in the spirit of collage, he toggled between assembling items irregularly by instinct and painstakingly seeking symmetry, as with the leather pieces puzzled into a bra and ample top. But if you’re wondering how everything relates, consider a continuum of gutsy at one end and graceful at the other. It’s probably a good sign that most of the looks, despite their assorted compositions, would land toward the middle—whether a stiff neoprene-backed trench worn as a dress, or the sculpted layers of butterfly-pattern intarsia that riffed on the Colombian flag colors as a poetic close to the show.

December 06, 2017