Most of the front row were wearing florals in a girly with tough heels way as New York resists autumn with still baking temperatures.
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How else do you modernise the pretty print? Right on cue an alternative directive was offered by Prabal Gurung's spring summer 2012 show.
Prabal took a cute floral, pixelated it, Rorschach ink-blotted it (you know, those paint patterns you used to fold in half as a kid and no matter how you distributed the paint, it always looked like a butterfly. Please don't psycho-analyse that), and attached it to athletic shapes like running shorts and racer-back dresses. Some of them created a trompe l'oeil effect akin to Mary Katrantzou's work, others were paint-splattered and worked on to accordion pleats.
Sheer panels, geometric lines and cutout shapes helped the sporty theme along, with some great collaborations in the form of Linda Farrow eyewear and Nicolas Kirkwood heels. Less successful were the stray ostrich feather and ticker tape effects, but this was easily overlooked in the face of razor-sharp tailoring and surrealised prints. The crowd was buzzing with talk that this was his best yet.
