AP News, September 8th, 2007
For the J. Mendel label's spring collection, shown Friday at New York Fashion Week, designer Gilles Mendel did everything he could to make it cool.
He wasn't aiming for that leather-jacket sort of cool, nor was he necessarily striving for temperature cool since he showed fur on clothes that are supposed to be for warm weather. Instead, Mendel's line was cool in that grace-under-pressure way that his socialite customers appreciate.
Many of them were indeed in the audience at the Bryant Park tents, as were celebrities Carrie Underwood, Jamie-Lynn Sigler and LeAnn Rimes.
They had their choice of a sand-colored sleeveless coat dress, a white cotton pantsuit with lattice-style details and white python trim or a lavender satin-faced chiffon dress with ruching, more lattice patterns and feathers.
"All women have many dimensions, and I wanted my collection to reflect all the moods of a modern woman," Mendel said in his notes.
Cindi Leive, editor in chief of Glamour magazine, thought the dresses, of which there were many, were the highlight. "There were a million beautiful dresses that I wish I was 3 feet taller to wear," she said.
It certainly couldn't hurt to be tall and lithe to wear a stunning gray silk mousseline and tulle dress with hundreds of dainty pleats _ all done by hand _ and silver sequined trim, but there also was an airiness to it that would likely keep it from overwhelming a more petite frame.
"I wanted the gowns to have the look of couture while keeping an idea of easy elegance clearly in sight," Mendel said. "My dream was to create a collection that would be equally at home on the runway and in reality."
Well, many of his clients live in a different reality than most people since all the special handcrafted details and extraordinary furs, including a long lilac broadtail vest with gray lacquered trim, don't come cheap.
