Billy Reid’s mastery of fabrics helped elevate his men’s and women’s collection to a whole new place for spring.
The designer first showed the line at his annual shindig in his hometown of Florence, Ala., a few weeks ago as an installation at Rosenbaum House, the only Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home in Alabama. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the architect’s birth.
Reid said the house, which he visits often, helped inspire the spring line. “As I put the looks together, it was like people hanging out at a cocktail party,” he said.
The line centered around soft, drapey pieces in luxurious fabrics such as washed suedes and leathers, cotton linen blends and shearlings.
Reid said he worked “toward softening our silhouettes throughout the collection and using lightweight constructions, softened interlinings and fabric hands. We wanted the garments to have a lived-in feel. We used textiles combining silk and cashmere in garment-washed suitings. The effect gives a broken-in luxury and sense of ease, to which our customer responds well.”
Among the standout pieces was a man’s tan linen jacket over a jacquard sweater with a “fragmented” silhouette worn with a cotton cashmere tubular pant with no side seams to allow for movement.
Also for men, Reid

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Hurricanes, nuclear threats and infuriating political posturing were all forgotten — at least a little while — Monday afternoon. Thanks, Johnson Hartig.
The designer of Libertine trotted out an energetic collection that he cheerfully described as “all over the map.”
But while the influences may have been eclectic — pop art, canines and bananas — the end result was an upbeat, uplifting take on the spring season.
Hartig didn’t stray far from his DNA, offering up an array of embellished jackets, coats and dresses in a rainbow of colors. “I never met a color I’m not infatuated with,” he said.
But there were a lot more dresses than in seasons past. “I kept hearing from the ladies that they just wanted to put on one thing and be finished,” he said.
Although there were still plenty of the highly decorated, appliquéd pieces that have become a hallmark of the brand, Hartig also toned it down a bit — for him — with a couple of slinky sequined evening outfits, including one with red straps that lent a playful touch.
He used the same sequined design as a panel on a men’s hoodie and shorts outfit, providing an eye-opening option for the customer seeking another take on

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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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From a critic’s perspective, you know a show did its job when you leave thinking about the clothes and how to descriptively do them justice — not wondering who the guy wearing the face paint that matched his embroidered pants sitting across the aisle was. Phillip Lim’s spring show was just right. The clothes looked clear and awake coming down the runway and not just because they were shown under intense klieg lights. He hit refresh on familiar things — crisp shirts, suiting and tailoring and ruffles — rethinking them without overthinking anything.
“There were no big ideas,” he said backstage. “It was just that need to find something fresh and new for myself.” He found it in disparate references — gypsy flamencos, Ethiopian rugby jerseys and Nineties minimalist suits — that he blended together and mellowed with a very light, modernist hand. The looks were not plain, but there was a clarity and cleanness to them. Gypsy ruffles were streamlined into crisp cotton shirts that looked like a single piece of fabric simply cut with a hole for one’s head, and asymmetrically tiered skirts worn in combinations of solid black and beige. Sporty red and blue rugby stripes were refashioned

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Most know her as a self-made Filipina businesswoman-turned-designer specializing in lingerie and sleepwear, but Josie Natori insists she’s “a musician number one in my soul.”
Natori, who turned 70 in May, started taking piano lessons at her mother’s request when she was age 4. “In the Philippines, it is a given that every child plays an instrument, no matter from what walk of life,” she says. “It’s not even a choice. You just do it.”
At age nine, she played her first concert, and by 50, she had become so devoted to piano that she destroyed a wall in her Manhattan apartment so her Steinway could be hoisted out of it and into Carnegie Hall. There, at the prestigious music venue, Natori gave the performance of her life.
“It is a highlight,” she recalls of her 50th birthday concert at Carnegie. “The Nineties were a very difficult decade in the business. In the Eighties, I couldn’t do anything wrong, and in the Nineties, I couldn’t do anything right. The only thing I did right was this concert.” It was, she says, a gift to herself — one that 2,800 people watched her unwrap.
Complete with an 85-member orchestra, the performance was the culmination of three

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Clare Waight Keller is tearing a page from the streetwear handbook as part of her creative roadmap for Givenchy.
The English designer, who is to unveil her first collection for the storied French house on Oct. 1 during Paris Fashion Week, plans to offer monthly drops of exclusive products on Givenchy’s revamped web site, which is to finally add online sales beginning Sept. 25, starting in France.
The first capsule comprises five key pieces in white — a hoodie, T-shirt, sweater, clutch and mini Pandora bag. A “mini me” range for adults and children is scheduled for November.
While a latecomer to having its own e-commerce, Givenchy boasts more than 13 million followers on social platforms, including many under-35s with high expectations for luxury brands in the digital space.
“The good side of launching our e-commerce platform way after our competitors is we gained experience and knowledge over the last few years that we were able to direct at creating a seamless, faultless destination,” said Philippe Fortunato, chief executive officer of the French company. “The advantage of taking our time on this project is we got to make it a real in-house transformation.”
In fact, Fortunato said the web site is not merely an e-commerce

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“I have no fetish for lingerie,” Josie Natori says with exaggerated exasperation. “To me, it’s clothes. I don’t get all this categorization.”
Natori has long had a thing for business. “I knew as a child, I’d have my own,” she says.
Her professional inevitability is now marking its 40th anniversary. Given the boundless energy that manifests in rapid-fire conversation, she seems good for another 40 years (or more). She might get close; her father worked until he was 93; her mother, at 92, still clocks in every day at the family construction business in the Philippines, and writes every outgoing check.
Natori holds the post of chief executive officer while her son, Kenneth Natori, who joined the company after stints as a reporter for Bloomberg and on Wall Street, is president. Completing the family triptych, her husband Ken Sr., is chairman. Market sources put the volume of Natori’s core business at upward of $50 million; $125 million total including licensees.
Natori’s path to fashion came seamlessly as a consumer but circuitously as an entrepreneur. Her mother was, and remains, a voracious participant in the world of style and as a child, Natori followed her lead, her penchant for coordination indicative of her eye for

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Finding a retailer who doesn’t gush about Josie Natori is about as likely as the designer putting a blinged-out rhinestone-covered bra in her collection.
Natori, whose impeccable taste is well-documented, has a large following in the fashion community, and is beloved by her loyal customer base, which only endears her more to her retail partners.
When Natori in August threw a party to celebrate her company’s 40th anniversary, the guest list at the Prince George ballroom read like a who’s who of retail with Hudson Bay’s Jerry Storch, Bergdorf Goodman’s Linda Fargo, Burt Tansky, Terry J. Lundgren, Ron Frasch and Rose Marie Bravo in attendance.
“As the first retailer to buy Josie’s line in 1977, Saks has invested 40 years in the Natori brand,” said Tracy Margolies, chief merchant of Saks Fifth Avenue. “From Day One, and through the decades, her impeccable talent has never wavered. She knows how to make women feel flawless. Josie has been a wonderful supporter and partner of Saks as well, and we’re incredibly proud and happy to have witnessed her brand evolve into the empire it is today.”
“Josie has always understood the importance of collaboration,” said Neiman Marcus senior vice president and fashion director Ken Downing. “She’s a great

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Running a multimillion dollar business that your mother founded and continues to be the driving force behind is no easy feat, as president of The Natori Company Ken Natori can attest.
But 10 years after he gave up a Wall Street job in institutional equity sales, the Stanford Business School graduate has no regrets about joining the company as president. While his mother tends to be in-the-moment, impulsive and eternally optimistic, Ken Natori is more cautious, realistic, planned and calculated. “We really are very much a yin and yang, which is good actually,” he said.
At 70, his mother could not be more passionate about everything she does, and some of that drive is genetic. “My mother’s father came from a very poor family in the Philippines and worked his way up to build a successful construction company. After he died, my grandmother now runs that company at 92 years old. That work ethic, passion and constant energy just got passed down to my mother. Whether it’s working here or practicing piano, she just put that passion into everything she does,” Ken Natori said. “My mother could not be more passionate about everything she does. It’s not easy work.”
Internationally distributed in 20 countries,

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New York City’s Library of Distilled Spirits stocks 1,000 spirits and mixes 150 cocktails.