VintageGriffin.com

Elie Tahari has made a really strong foray of late into vintage and antique styles. Taking silhouettes and details and integrating them with deconstruction, overstiching, piecing and incredible textures.

The Audra jacket is but one example, but an example that's worth noting as Elie Tahari's spring 2006 line starts going on sale.

Elie Tahari has made a really strong foray of late into vintage and antique styles. Taking silhouettes and details and integrating them with deconstruction, overstiching, piecing and incredible textures.

The Audra jacket is but one example, but an example that's worth noting as Elie Tahari's spring 2006 line starts going on sale.

This jacket has a tight, crisp silhouette and the spanking, yacht-sail white makes it really pop. That summery white takes a bit of the silhouette's formality down a notch. The result is a jacket that you can wear to a terribly nice restaurant but also a jacket one can wear strolling along the beach. Aside from the Renaissance silhouette, the doublet-like closures, scalloped hem, long cuffs and short, stand-up collar recall the past, but do not dwell in it. This is definitely a modern, lovely garment that takes inspiration from a worthy muse, but is not a slave to it. Fabulous.

The shape is based on that of a Renaissance doublet. Both women and men wore doublets, but this one style inspiration derives from the masculine variety, loosely 16th century. Note structural similarities to the doublet in Moroni's circa 1570 portrait of a gentleman. The Audra jacket also sports densly repeated closures in a tight, vertical line. These mirror the fastenings on an extant linen doublet (courtesy Costume in detail, by Avril Hart).




Where can I find this?

Nieman Marcus

http://www.neimanmarcus.com