Alexis LaMontagna is brilliant. (check out the video of my interview with her!) Some designers seem to do a lot of work to summon a look or a creation and others just seem blessed to have "it". Alexis is naturally overflowing with "it" and her designs mirror this natural talent in a way that reveals how narcissus became entranced by his own image and fell in. Today I fell into Alexis LaMontagna's show and although the day took me other places to meet interesting people and see others’ creations, at the end of it all, listening to the CD given out at her show, I knew I would return home, my own creativity expanded just by having seen LaMontagna's Fashion Week debut. Her designs well over with a natural essence and style - pouring out images of Dita von Teese and a young incorrigible Morticia Adams onto the average business woman's sexy essentials. The excitement I had watching her designs trot down the runway was not unlike the feeling of walking into a Betsey Johnson store for the first time at age 16. I knew I was discovering something lasting. Something special. I can't wait for the day when I go home to DC and walk into the Alexis LaMontagna store. Her clothes are an extension of her - dark-haired, sexy femininity that is at once strong and inviting, romantic and dark, fantastical and direct. She had a stunning debut to put it mildly. It has a been a few years since I have seen anything come out of fashion that does not immediately conotate too much effort to conform, or "pop", or resemble an architectural structure. Like many other women I'm dying for clothes that celebrate a unique, sexual, dynamic, powerful, yet inviting woman. Alexis does this and drapes every ounce in an infectious sexiness. LaMontagna combines Japanese denim, cashmere, leather, and lace into a seamless recipe for the powerful yet inviting sexy woman. I felt more attractive just looking at her designs. Her runway was populated by lots of teeny little tanks and exceedingly well tailored high waisted trousers and skirts that do nothing but defy the current loosely shaped potato bags everyone seems to be in love with. Thank god for something new, something bold, and something that celebrates the female form. I'll let the pictures fill in the details, but just in case you are wondering who the break out star of fashion week is...it is Alexis LaMontagna.
