This is just one collection, I don't think you can damn their whole design approach based on just this.
It's not their greatest, for sure, and their accessories and furniture are much more interesting, but I think there are some fascinating pieces and ideas there. They should listen up and do better for their next collections.
And on a separate note, dear fellow fashionistas, you can be critical but do not speak disparagingly of "avant-gardes" and do not compare them to the designers who produce expensive, tailored, "finished" clothes. They are in another category altogether. There are different groups of fashion peoples interested in different types of fashion. You might feel differently about what looks to you to be "freakish" garments, but others might appreciate them for experimenting and breaking taboos and boundaries about what clothes are meant to be. It'll be horrible if all we see on the runways are the ProenzaShoulers, the Marc Jacobs, the Calvin Kleins and the AnnaSuis/Betsey Johnson, even though they are indisputable successes. Isn't that what makes NY Fashion Week such a bore? For a comparable market size, in Europe, we have a wide range from the Pradas, the YSLs, Lanvin, Diors, CdG,Yohji, Martin Margiela, Chalayan, the Antwerpens to lots of little "avant-gardes" like Perjoski, Bless and Preen. More is more. If every time a designer who deviates from the conventional good-taste/beautiful fashion route is ridiculed and shot down by critics, rather than getting constructive feedback (positive or negative), you will never have new ideas and experimentation. Sure, you also have stupid excesses like Basso & Brooke this SS06, but I'd rather they reign in their stupidity and keep experimenting than to become more like, say, Paul Smith. Also, the stronger, more popular indies' ideas filter into and influence the mainstream, inevitably. It's bad enough they don't make much profit, but if you pull the last vestiges of support from the indies/alternatives, you'd get left with the same old, same old. Let's be open-minded and let a thousand flowers bloom, so to speak.
I must have really been in a bad mood that day. Still don't like the collection, three months later, but I'm interested to see what the Bless girls do for fall.
