Have you ever become completely irritated by a box of chocolate? You know the kind: concept chocolate, artfully arranged in a just-so box, flavors exotic and trying. I’m afraid that was my overall reaction to Jason Wu’s collection on Friday at the St. Regis Hotel.
Mr. Wu has a pretty good eye for color and prints. This season he plays with broken-wave prints (he called them Rorschach prints in his show notes) and some silk or denim tweeds with the small-grid pattern of industrial screens. For some reason I liked the idea of a slim, hooded tracksuit in dark tweed. It’s wearable and, at the same time, just a little out of it. A tweed mini-sheath with whorls of staple-like embroidery was lovely.
But a banality creeps into the picture. Whereas Mr. Gurung manages to take lightly the notion of feminine packaging, Mr. Wu treats it with a prissiness. Waists are defined and ribbon-tied. There are peplums aplenty. You suspect that Mr. Wu, like many designers, has spent a few hours gazing at the play clothes of Claire McCardell. Yet his cuffed shorts look unplayful and certainly not original. Though he tries.
He should try a little less hard is the answer. Not everything in life is a spotless decorator interior or a magazine spread. He should loosen up a bit. And why the uniformly short hemlines, six inches above the knee? That in itself is the sign of a fairly conformist outlook.