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Stacey Bendet brought the drama.
The Alice + Olivia founder and CEO staged a theatrical fall presentation inspired by none other than William Shakespeare.
Admiring the finery were celebrities like Julianne Hough, Tiffany Haddish, Anna Cathcart, Gavin Casalegno, Ming Lee Simmons, Jenny Mollen and Dani Stahl.
“The whole theme was ‘Shakespeare is in Love,’ and each set is a different Shakespeare play,” Bendet told Alexa, adding that the line is richly ornamented with embellishments like lace-trimmed cuffs and collars and jacquard shot with gold. “I feel like clothes are going to be really expensive this year, so let’s make it worth it!”
In preparation for the season, the brand’s design team visited the The Royal Shakespeare Company’s archive and costume hire collection in Stratford-upon-Avon, England. The remarkable repository catalogs clothing, millinery, jewelry, armory, footwear and other items dating all the way back to 1879.
Using these artifacts as a starting point, Bendet fashioned an embroidered skirt of sonnets, 16th-century inspired lantern skirts and capes and a Lady Macbeth-inspired black velvet corset dress.
Dozens of models posed in tableaux vivants harkening back to the famous works: A floral fantasy recalling “Midsummer Night’s Dream;” a balcony overlooking a garden from “Romeo and Juliet,” and a gold backdrop invoking The Merchant of Venice.
“The beauty of this collection exemplifies how we can learn so much from the past to create in the present,“ said Bendet.
Her friend Julianne Hough, who glided into the party wearing a crisp white caped vest and pants, told Alexa that she admires Bendet’s fertile imagination. “Fashion can sometimes feel quite stuffy – we take things so seriously. She does such a great job at creating fun and play. It’s always a blast.”
