Altuzarra Fall 2012 Review

My opinion on Joseph Altuzarra tends to waver somewhere between awful and point of interest. I've not forgotten his dubious spring 2011 show that featured tribal snakeskin appliqué nor his penchant for liberally borrowing from his design idol Tom Ford.
However with less than ten shows under his belt his latest collection is his most accomplished. He showed military coats, cargo pants, French-style skirts and jackets, along with trimmings such as coins and pom-poms. It all sounds like a lot to juggle into one collection but there was restraint and a sense of reality to most of the pieces. He delved-rather unsuccessfully-back into velvet with a pair of flared trousers and a bottle green jacket that somehow managed to add about 20kg to the model thanks to the way it was cut to pull away from the body. Though I enjoyed most of this collection I still got whiffs of other designers work, most notably Nicolas Ghesquiere's fall 2007 collection for Balenciaga.