Maria McManus spun a country girl/city girl tale with her spring collection, which was enriched by the time she spent in her native Ireland this summer. While there the designer recalled her salad days, “I was a ’90s child who grew up in a very musical rave culture partying,” she said. She also read Edna O’Brien’s scandalous-at-the-time (because they considered women’s sex lives) novels The Country Girls and The Lonely Girl, both set in the ’60s. Subtle references to these decades were interwoven throughout an offering that spoke to how women are dressing today.
A touch of sportiness was introduced in the form of long shorts and striped polos, with a pearl substituting for one of the buttons. Pants were cut with a languorous drape. The requisite button-down was styled tied around the waist, and there was a ribbon-tied skirt made of collaged scarves. Adding a touch of what McManus called naivete (a little bit of country, in other words) were judiciously placed bands of delicate French lace on loose, easy column dresses with straps; these were hand-beaded on a perfect summer LBD that nodded to the Dublin dance halls O’Brien conjured in her books. It would also look right at home at a gallery opening or worn barefoot at a grassy backyard get-together.
The most celebratory look was a silver sequined skirt whose fanciness was toned down by a lightweight lilac sweater of tissue-thin organic cotton silk. No girl would be lonely for long in this get-up, which was representative of McManus’s overall approach to fashion: “Modern romanticism is something that I’m always really interested in,” she said.
