L.A. Fashion Week Spring '07: Morphine Generation
To get to Spring 2007, Eric Hart got lost in a park in London. The Los Angeles–based designer never learned the name of the park, but the visit inspired his latest Morphine Generation collection for men and women, which bowed Oct. 15 at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week at Smashbox Studios in Culver City, Calif.
It was easy to envision the London climate with Hart’s palette of charcoal grays, foggy whites, dusty mauves and icy lavenders. The collection continued Hart’s exploration of tailored sportswear mixed with jeans and tees, but the designer added several new silhouettes, including the shirtdress. His version was slim and short and bore a closer resemblance to a man’s dress shirt than to the 1950s classic shirtwaist dress. He showed his shirtdresses belted and topped with open-weave “fisherman’s net” sweaters. Hart’s jeans were long and lean, and many styles had a painter’s loop at the hip. There were tailored shorts and skirts and a few suspender styles for both.
The collection’s T-shirt graphics had a washed-out patina, as did the “overexposed” houndstooth pattern that appeared on a woman’s tunic and man’s polo shirt. The artistic approach to graphics continued into the tailored pieces. One of the standouts was a man’s shirt with cursive writing running along the inside of each cuff.
A diaphanous ballerina dress was another of Hart’s design challenges this season. The pale dusty-rose dress had a dropped waist, a petal hem and a screen-printed lining that was lightly visible through the dress’s bodice. —Alison A. Nieder
