L.A. in N.Y.: Cornell Collins
A select group of fashion followers turned out to see the latest line from Los Angeles designer Cornell Collins at his New York showroom Schuman in the city’s Chelsea district. Collins has always had a specific source of inspiration for his collections, and this season was no exception. For Spring 2002, the designer cited Nellie Olsen, the bratty, spoiled and sometimes evil character from the 1970s TV show “Little House on the Prairie.” But, as Collins explained, it wasn’t about her in a literal sense.
“It was more about exploring her emotional side,” he said. “It was about Nellie figuring out what’s underneath it all. In some of the clothes, there are a lot of things that were encased or trapped inside or kind of two things in one. That was about her feeling trapped. It was about disappointment, frustration and depression. And it is very decadent because Nellie could be very decadent.”
Collins’ decadent gowns done in silk taffeta, silk organza and tulle certainly carried on his avant-garde and extremely detail-oriented style. But according to Collins, “It wasn’t about decadence in a bourgeois sense, but rather, in a destructive sense. Even though the clothes are very beautiful, what I was showing was, in a way, how she [Nellie] was being self-destructive through the way she dresses. For instance, she was making herself a mad person getting dressed by putting on all these ruffles and a skirt over a skirt and all this fabric, trying to compensate for whatever’s missing in her life or whatever’s bothering her.”
Tulle overlays, smocked details and lots of ruffles gave otherwise girly prairie-like floral prints a jagged edge, while Collins’ use of soft color—yellow, ivory and light blue—kept us reminded of that proper, rich young woman who inspired it all. —Joselle Yokogawa
