Watching Saturday evening’s colorfully graphic, sixties-inflected Loewe presentation, with its mod-chic flared skirts, neat compact purses enlivened with touches of pop bright or neon hues, and fluttery butterflies everywhere (even lining some of the dresses), it all became clear. The received wisdom is this: Next spring is all about long. That’s it. Finish. The end. There is nothing left to be said. Except there was, and then along came Paris, and some designers who weren’t so quick to endorse the motion towards the downward shift. There was Balenciaga’s Nicolas Ghesquiere, who was resolute in working with aggro-chic shorter lengths, flipping between street culture and salon couture. Then Peter Copping said he was still feeling short for Nina Ricci. And that was before Alber Elbaz had flagged his colors to the mast of the more miniscule lengths at Lanvin. There is, as you can see, a counterintuitive cabal of designers who don’t think the matter has been settled. It’s not that some of them are averse to exploring the possibilities of long, but they still feel short is relevant.
Stuart Vevers is one of them. His Loewe was almost all skimming far north of the knees, with leather floral appliqués on tiny skirts and neat tops, or a sparer-than-spare sand suede shift, or a lipstick-pink leather dress with a draped scarf neckline. The scarf was the recurring theme for the show—Vevers had been inspired by discovering some butterfly-print scarves in the house’s archive, as well as a butterfly exhibit he visited at Madrid’s Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales—and some of the pieces looked like he’d worked a standard-size print silk scarf around the body, with perhaps just the scarf’s rolled edge being the only indication of his idea. And, of course, for an accessories specialist like Vevers, the bags were chic and sharp and playful just enough: classic, understated shapes—a structured duffel, a scaled-down gilt chain strap purse—enlivened by amping up their neutral tones with zinger dashes of bright pink, purple, green. There was a controlled exuberance to the whole thing that was really appealing.
Of course, it seems a little retrogressive to even be considering the ideas about the hem length Vevers offered up; fussing about this kind of stuff feels past its sell-by date. Who cares? Wear whatever length you like. (That was Alber’s message.) And yet, the omnipresent idea of short had become so associated of late with those tired tight, tighter, tightest dresses and teetering platforms, which started to not only look trashy but also negatively emblematic of a certain genre of celebrity culture. What all of the designers still doing short for spring shared is one idea: that if you’re going to go upwards, conversely, the shoes have to be ground-level flat, the new slightly raised flat, or at the very least a shoe at a lower elevation. Vevers had kitten-heel pumps encrusted with three-dimensional beading and sequins in scarlet or rose gold. They made his sportier A-line shapes look not only chic, but fun.