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Alberta Ferretti has a very distinct look, and a very loyal customer base. She excels at the lingerie-look slip dress, somewhere between Edwardian tea-gowns and those handkerchief-hem wisps of dotted chiffon that were all the rage at Great Gatsby-esque lawn picnics. Quite simply put, it's textbook nostalgic femininity, and summer is the time when that really shines (it's much more difficult to picture yourself in a tulle nightgown-as-evening-gown in sub-zero temperatures).
They're quite singular creations, although there's usually a trend that can be applied to Ferretti's trademark creations. For S/S 2011, we noticed her ideas underlining the pastels we've seen elsewhere, and all those yards of fluid chiffon billowing elegantly behind models on London and New York catwalks. But there was something a little more rough-hewn to Ferretti's vision this time, mixing in thick, openwork knit fisherman sweaters and slouchy cardigans. It wasn't grunge by any means, but perhaps it was born of the same desire that has pushed others to dress up to mess up this season. Her dresses got the same treatment - occasionally - rendered in murky off-shades of dirty green and tobacco yellow, or a rainbow of tan like various strengths of stewed tea.
Practical as they sound, they seemed like the catwalk statement. It was the softer, more diaphanous numbers that you can imagine on the back of Ferretti's girls: the georgette gowns quivering with ruffles and with filmy floral prints crawling across their surface may not be to everyone's taste, but you could easily imagine many a Neo-hippy Trustafarian floating about Mediterranean hot-spots oh-so-dreamily in them.