Catwalk Report: Zac Posen

By Carla Bevan. Photograph by Mitchell Sams on Wednesday 12 September 2007

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Zac Posen SS08

'MY COLLECTION IS an homage to early American settlers and their insistence on simplicity and craft,' Zac Posen said in his show notes. 'Days of Heaven, the Shakers, wheat fields of the great plains and the romance of the wide open sky.'

Had American hottest young designer lost his mind? This is, after all, the man who dressed Gwyneth Paltrow for her last Oscar appearance, the man whose clothes fill the wardrobes of Claire Danes and Natalie Portman. Demure? Surely not?

A quick scan through the outfit names - 'Pinwheel Dress', 'Prairie Skirt', 'Windstorm Blouse' - did nothing to calm the nerves. Ha! We should have known better.

Out burst onto the catwalk an array of flirty little dresses, skinny-leg trousers and red-carpet stunners. The inspiration was there for all to see, in the halter-neck dresses and white peasant blouses, but everything had been re-imagined and reworked to be bigger, better and sexier than anything the Shakers had ever seen.

Frills were oversized and swished down into long trains on the floor, a 'crystal wheat brooch' was so large it covered Jessica Stam's entire bodice, while Maryna Linchuk's 'Woven Crow Gown' might have been black (the Crow bit, we presume), but was also cut so low we could almost see her bellybutton and slashed in ribbons so high she was in danger of flashing her knickers.

True, many of the girls were wearing little bonnets, but they came covered in rhinestones. And there

were shirts buttoned right up to the collar, but they were paired with tight, high-waisted shorts or flirty, short skirts. The girls themselves were in no doubt about the message behind their outfits, pouting and preening for all they were worth as they faced the wall of photographers at the end of the catwalk.

Finally for that 'wide open sky' inspiration - Zac's most literal translation of the day. Out onto the catwalk glided five models at once, dressed in the 'Serene Gown', the 'Nimbus Dress', the 'Cyclone Gown', 'the Cumulus Gown' and the 'Cirrus Gown'. But the dresses weren't the calm, sunny white you might have imagined, rather the whipped-up material conveyed an inky, stormy sky with rain on the way. Clearly Zac hasn't lost his dark side just yet.

The audience lapped it up. P Diddy lead the standing ovation and Lucy Liu grabbed Demi Moore's hand to literally run backstage to congratulate the designer before the music had even stopped playing. It looks like Shaker chic is here to stay.