Miguel Adrover's Dazzling Fashion Fireworks
By: Godfrey Deeny
Photos by Visko Hatfield
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NEW YORK, Sep 10, 2001/ FWD/Chalk up another artistic victory - which we predict will be followed by commercial
success - for Miguel Adrover.
After a testing year, during which his financial backer, Pegasus Group, went through severe financial
convulsions, the Spanish-born designer presented a brilliantly inventive collection that will influence
fashion globally - something one can say about few other New York collections.
"Thank you for not losing the faith and sensitivity through a most challenging time for us all," Adrover
wrote in the program notes.
If Miguel's previous Egyptian-inspired collection was criticized for being too literal, this show, entitled
“Utopia,” ranged all over the planet with Jamaican porkpie hats, Cuban flag colors, Andean mountain shapes,
Flamenco dresses and baggy Turkish pants.
Staged in a white Moorish-style cloister in a Lower East Side high school yard, the show's opening outfits
underlined Adrover's ability to blend Western chic and Third World colors and cut - harem pants and slippers
worn with tight singlets or dexterous lace bodices worn with Peruvian peasant hats.
The collection packed plenty of fashion fireworks. You could almost hear stylists' antennae stiffen when
Adrover sent out to-the-floor gowns painted with Moorish arches on top and a desert caravanserai scene at
knee height, followed by a slew of quilted patchwork jackets and coats in Arabian geometric designs.
His choice of models was also refreshing, with many new ethnic faces and a pair of austere twins with high
cheekbones who finished the show, one in an Andalusian-inspired look, the other in an undertaker's three-piece
suit.
"A brilliant collection," said Bloomingdale's fashion SVP Kal Ruttenstein. "It hit that point where fashion
and art collide with each other. Very creative, very sophisticated, very international."
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