Los Angeles Fashion Week Spring 2002: David Cardona
David Cardona showed his darker side this season by presenting a predominantly all-black collection at Audi Presents Designer Collections of Los Angeles Fashion Week. The designer set a dramatic mood with classical music and girls made up with glossy black lips, iridescent skin and slicked or spiked hair.
“I wanted to make it a little bit harder,” Cardona said of the collection. “A little bit dominatrix with the strapping on some of the leather tops, including the leather bra and the garter skirt. [The collection] had a lot to do with undergarments—making undergarments that are wearable on the outside. Just a little sinister edge.”
Slim low-rise pants with leather tops or tailored menswear jackets and leather funnel-neck collars had that sinister feel indeed, but a black leather hot pant and suede wrap top may have been the most sinister of all.
Cardona’s full-length dresses certainly maintained the edge with asymmetrical, cutout or one-shoulder looks, leather straps and insets and an overall dramatically elegant feel. A few surprises of pure white, especially a strapless full-length gown with unfinished edges and a trailing train and the finale piece—a black silk tailcoat with very elongated tails lined in white—were the perfect ending to an otherwise seasonless show. —Joselle Yokogawa
