Chloé Comme Parris takes us to the ’70s for fall/winter 2012, and a model takes her shoes off on the runway

Sister design team Chloe and Parris Gordon had their third at-bat yesterday with their line Chloé Comme Parris. This was their most packed show yet, filling almost all the seats in the cavernous runway room with guests like model Stacey McKenzie (in her most casual royal purple blazer and booty shorts), nail polish impresario Essie Weingarten and PR queen Natasha Koifman. When one model had problems walking in her teetering stilettos, she simply doffed them (to huge applause from the audience), though McKenzie, typically one for loud outbursts from her seat to models she adores, kept relatively silent. The Lou Reed soundtrack was spot-on for the collection—the clothes were like a sexy, less heroin-induced iteration of 1970s New York rock ’n’ roll.

Click here to see the Chloé Comme Parris fall/winter 2012 collection »

We loved a pair of cigarette pants with gold zippers, a camel-coloured sweater dress with a built-in cape and a wool jacket with epaulettes, zippers and gold hardware. The hardware (Parris is known to work on it in every collection) was everywhere: on the sleeves and back of a navy trench, on a pair of skinny trousers, on a leather tunic. A long, olive-green pleated skirt paired with an oversized sweater seemed influenced by fellow Torontonian designer Jeremy Laing’s style, but we’ll simply call it an homage. There were frillier looks, too, like pleated floral-print skirts and fur vests and shrugs, which, while feminine, still retained the sisters’ consistent Gothic influence. We’re surprised we haven’t already lost the Gordon sisters to New York, but when the day eventually comes, we can just sneer, “Oh, we’ve known about them forever.”