Swept Away With the Jet Set
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
Before its demise in the early 1990s, the brand Ports International was one of Canada’s signature fashion houses, synonymous with a preppy image and moderate prices. After recessionary troubles, Ports rebranded as the luxury label Ports 1961, hiring Dean and Dan Caten — now of DSquared — and running glamorous ad campaigns with Kate Moss. The current creative director, Tia Cibani, created a spring collection inspired by “La Portena,” a romanticized time in 1940s Argentina when, according to the program notes, “luxury train travel transformed the architectural landscape of South America.”
The aesthetic is modern, chic, and wonderfully evocative of the smart, jet-set glamour that Ms. Cibani has built the brand around. It’s ladylike but emphatically not in a prim manner. This is commanding in a red-lipstick kind of way, even if there is flow and a measure of flounce and embellishment. If one of these women were to show up in a trench, who knows if she would be wearing anything beneath it?
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