The designers behind
Evidence of Evolution,
Ali Alborzi and
Andrew McCarthy, showed their
Green collection this year at
LA’s Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, and as the name suggests, the sprightly brand is evolving into Los Angeles’s most fashion-serious label. Not surprisingly, the brand was named
"Mercedes-Benz Presents" Designer for the week. Evidence of Evolution’s creativity and environmentally sound designs convinced Mercedes-Benz to sponsor the collection for this season’s Spring showing.
While Los Angeles’s fashion week has always carried with it an inferior reputation when compared to its sister show, the big-name
New York Fashion Week, shows like
Evidence of Evolution reaffirm Angelenos’ place in the fashion industry.
Financially stable designers launch their lines in New York alongside heavy hitters, while lesser-known names at Los Angeles Fashion Week fall victim to an "anything goes" attitude expectation. This season’s
Evidence of Evolution collection embodied everything that Los Angeles fashion aspires to be: showering the fashion industry with inspirational and trend-setting styles without sacrificing that uniquely L.A. culture. In other words,
Evidence of Evolution is putting Los Angeles on the fashion map.
For their spring show,
Evidence of Evolution designers used low-impact dyes and no volatile-organic-compounds water-based paints for silk screening. The company also supports eco-consciousness by participating in http://www.carbonfund.org's Carbon Free Business to counterbalance carbon emissions.
Although some looks were as recycled as the materials used to fashion them (layering body-hugging tunics over leggings), the designers presented an overall fresh take on spring for 2008. While innovative silhouettes were sparse even in Paris this year,
Evidence of Evolution offered their humble opinions on next season’s shape trends.
They opened with a natural organic cotton voile blouse mini dress, alluding to free-flowing shapes illustrated earlier this year by designer
Alber Elbaz for Lanvin at the Paris show, one of the only shows recognized by fashion critics as a Paris-worthy collection.
The men’s line included a bomber jacket fashioned from natural hemp silk, an organic seersucker vest in white, chartreuse, and red, a vintage black, hand-dyed, slim, short-collar shirt, and electric blue, hand-dyed organic, slim, zip denim.
Female models rocked the runway in a chartreuse, hand-dyed organic cotton voile mini blouse dress, a vintage black, hand-dyed love mini tunic, and a turquoise blue, hand-dyed, organic cotton Henley that read "I (Recycle-sign) L.A."
In addition to providing the loose-fitting voile blouse dresses, both short and full-length, as new silhouettes for spring, Evidence for Evolution offered Angeleno fashionistas insight into a newer, bolder spring color scheme.
The show started out with white, graduated into grey, and confidently migrated towards chartreuse, navy, red, magenta, and electric blue. It was one of the shows that embraced spring as the colorful season of rebirth for which it is celebrated.
The designers demonstrated a less-than-serious approach towards Fashion Week, as many of its male models were clearly friends of the designers. At the very least, they were not professional models, and the attitude bolstered the L.A. brand without detracting from the professionalism of the brand’s industry-savvy styles. Club promoter extraordinaire Brent Bolthouse looked dashing in a hot-deep-pink sweater and skinny vintage black jeans.
The designers emerged together to thank their audience with the final model who donned a white, organic cotton, full-length, plunge-V, hood dress. The take-away message? I heart
Evidence of Evolution.
Explore collections at
http://www.evidenceofevolution.com
, blah blah blah
