KENZO PARIS

Against a Mexican festival of lights, to the chirrup of mariachi music, Antonio Marras transformed the Kenzo show into a salute to Latin America's haute bohemia: Frida Kahlo, Tina Modotti, and the female artists who set pulses racing south of the border in the early twentieth century. Marras said the whole scenario came to him in a dream. There was a sense of that in the show, with airy volumes and dark, evocative colors. But the inspiration also fit right into the magpie Kenzo aesthetic, which always raided other places, times, and states of mind to create its own patchwork culture.
And patchworked this collection most definitely was, with leather, wool, and fur appearing in the same coat, and a long cardigan collaged from cable knit, chiffon, and lace. A blouse in paisley chiffon was paired with a plaid kilt. The general effect successfully conveyed the image of Frida and her friends playing at devil-may-care dress-up. The key silhouette was a long knit over an even longer chiffon skirt, with gaucho boots to anchor the look. Scatterings of bronze beading and sequins added texture. Marras takes the same seemingly random approach to raw materials in his own collection, but here it was noticeably more lighthearted and poppier—kind of boho light.

Marras is contemporary fashion's great romantic. Here, he perhaps got carried away: There were a few too many airy, sheer, smocked floor sweepers. It was dark relief when his own innately gothic spirit found the drama in a blood-red rose print or a black suit in beaded brocade. "I would die for you," the mariachis sang. And that's surely one sentiment with which the designer could identify.