Seasonal Wrap-Up:S/S 2009

Yes, It's really over, but I thought before we continued with our normal posting I'd share some of my thoughts on the season overall. For starters, in a very broad sense it was far from great. A lot of the routine favorites underperformed this season. Blame it on the economy if you want, but I was bored by a lot of it. Save for Marc Jacobs, Lanvin, and (in my opinion) Prada, the greats weren't in true form this season. But I'm not being a pessimist here, because I kind of thought it was a good thing! It made room for other designers to steal the spotlight. My favorite collections were, in no particular order: Stella McCartney, Emanuel Ungaro, Dries van Noten, Givenchy, Gucci, Pollini, Prada, Blumarine, Etro, Karen Walker, Marc Jacobs, Proenza Schouler, Gianfranco Ferre, Armand Basi One, Lanvin, Ann Demuelemeester, Veronique Branquinho, Max Mara, Dolce & Gabbana, Missoni, Blugirl, Topshop Unique, Luella, Todd Lynn, Ralph Lauren, Zac Posen, and Jason Wu, although I have a feeling I'm forgetting some from New York. All that aside, I loved these collections, and very few of them were one of the really "big" ones.
The main theme that I noticed this season was continuity.Designers embraced an "if it's not broken, don't fix it" mentality and decided to forgo drastic changes and instead modify their greatest hits. Sometimes it worked (see Lanvin) but other times it tasted a little sour the second time around (see Balmain.) Overall, I'm hoping the designers will take the hint next season and use Fall as a launching pad for new ideas.
On the model front, things weren't as diverse as they were promised to be. Other than the predictable (Jourdan, Arlenis, Sessilee, and Lakshmi) there wasn't a real influx of color. But I am glad to see that at least we started to see something new. There weren't a ton of breakouts, but Imogen Morris-Clarke and Katie Fogarty were two who I plan to look out for in the future.
Now that this season is officially behind us, Meg and I will be returning to our previous, more diverse and sporadic posting. After doing this for almost a month I feel refreshed and I'm hoping to reinforce the fact that this is more than just a fashion blog, although fashion is obviously my topic of choice. I hope that anyone who started reading this for fashion week updates will keep coming back, and at the very least know that I am definitely planning to do this again with the Fall shows. See you around!