One of the fashion`s charms, that it serves nothing.

Vera Wang Pre-Fall 2012

Vera Wang recently moved her showroom from the hustle and bustle of New York’s Garment District to an airy space overlooking Madison Square Park. Geographically speaking, the new location is only ten blocks south of her old stomping grounds, but in many ways the neighborhoods are worlds apart. “It makes me feel like I’m in Europe,” said Wang this morning, standing by the window where Mario Batali’s Mediterranean food hall Eataly is visible through bare trees. Maybe this is why Wang’s new collection is partly a foreign affair, or what she might call a miniature love letter to Paris. “I’m having a tiny Jane Birkin moment,” she said. If there were any direct references to the Anglo-French icon they were deftly filtered through the designer’s distinctive lens: chiffon blouses with elongated silk ties, flirty painted wool miniskirts, and cropped pullovers designed to be worn with a decidedly urban insouciance. Building on last season’s abstracted prints, her psychedelic spin on Marie Antoinette’s wallpaper, the patterns had a similar modernist verve, and the swirling sunset palette on a short sheath dress was a shot of warmth in shades of gray. It’s the kind of thing she imagines her teenage daughter might shop for, “a tad more youthful than usual,” said Wang, who was swathed in a charcoal parka with tonal goat-hair trim.

by Chioma Nnadi