Christian Siriano has had a busy week. He dressed several stars for the Grammys on Sunday, outfitted Vice President Kamala Harris for the State of the Union address on Tuesday night, and staged a 56-look runway show at Gotham Hall in New York on Thursday. “I was on a 6 a.m. train to Washington, D.C., did the fitting, came back and did 34 fittings for this show,” Siriano said backstage. “I was like ‘are we alive everybody?’” The sharp burgundy suit that Harris wore was quite different from the clothes paraded down the catwalk on Thursday evening, which ranged from a sunshine yellow bubble-hemmed and -shouldered midi dress to a cutout tuxedo jacket with tails in the front worn only with tights and a saucer hat.
If that makes you think of Audrey Hepburn, then you and Siriano think alike. A photo of the actor dressed as Holly Golightly in one of the aforementioned hats greeted each guest. “We’re calling it Audrey Hepburn’s rose garden, but at midnight or 2 a.m. So it’s a little darker, a little sexier,” Siriano said backstage. The venue was filled with pink, purple, and white roses to drive home the effect. The flowers of Hepburn’s garden inspired the clothes as much as she did, through graphic rose prints and rosettes.
Siriano is dedicated to providing a fantastical escape through his runway shows. While he can do politician-appropriate tailoring, he uses the catwalk to showcase his other skill sets. And he says that works for his business: “All we are selling is evening wear. Every client, every store.” Still, watching the collection unfold, the moments of quiet and restraint—at least, by Siriano’s standards—were by far the most compelling. That doesn’t mean Siriano should be a minimalist. Just that the looks that require fewer adjectives to describe them have that movie star quality one associates with Hepburn. Nobody would call the aforementioned yellow dress simple or boring, but it hit the right amount of “enough.”
Still, you can always rely on Siriano to bring two much-desired qualities to his presentations: size diversity and star power. To the latter point, Lindsay Lohan sat in the front row alongside Julia Stiles and Quinta Brunson, while Lohan’s siblings Dakota and Ali wore look 39 and 9, respectively. A fashion week family affair.
