NEW YORK, September 12, 2011
By Alison Baenen
In the center of Stacey Bendet's Alice + Olivia presentation was a giant tree heavy with shoes. The fruits of Bendet's labor, as it were, represented the label's first full line of shoes, and they were just as whimsical and bright as any of its apparel. "I wanted to bring a little more fashion into footwear," the designer explained the day before her presentation. Fashion came in lawn green, cherry red, and lemon yellow, in toes pointy and round, and on heels wedged and sharp. Bendet designs from a strictly retail standpoint, and her shoes, like her clothes, are geared toward allowing the Alice + Olivia customer to walk out of the store with as many different options as she has moods. "I want each look to be a different girl," she said.
Some of those girls are more easily identifiable than others. A poppy-colored shift dress with a high, rolled collar would fit right in with Christina Ricci and crew's Pan Am uniforms, and a beaded tank dress—worn with one of a few, winning straw hats by Kokin—looked very Prohibition Era. For girls who want to look more like themselves in the present day, it will be best to strip this collection down to parts—a printed scarf here, a striped pant there—and to wear the shoes with only one of the above.
