Signature Oscar — quite literally.
In developing their second runway collection for Oscar de la Renta, Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia wanted to pay homage to the house founder in a personal way. They’d already developed a new logo — replacing the original, a variant of de la Renta’s handwritten signature — with his actual John Hancock, recognizable to many from Oscar’s penchant for warm hand-written notes. “It all started from his signature,” Garcia said during a preview. “We just started looking at that and all the people who wrote notes to the house thanking the house, and how personal people’s connection is with the house. We took it in a literal way that was touching and fun.”
At the same time, and probably less fun, like everyone else in Tonyville, Kim and Garcia must negotiate fashion’s new, casual reality — how to make clothes relevant to today’s ever more dressed-down lifestyle while staying true to the house and still being distinctive enough to merit a luxury price tag. No easy task.
The pair approached the challenge head-on, upping the sportswear ante — Denim! White shirts! And they rendered the arty motif (they showed at Sotheby’s) with a wink, nod and painterly profusion:
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