Revisiting a Familiar Place

LONDON - The question of national sartorial identity gets even more complicated by a collection like Tom Ford 's, which provoked a startling sense of time travel into the past, from the mirrored floors and walls to the follow spotlight and the Glamazonian sex pots with tousled shag cuts on the runway. Toto, we're not in London anymore: We're in 1990s Milan!

Indeed, according to the show notes, Mr. Ford was inspired by his own work during his Gucci years, but more so (more leg! more platform shoe!) and thus out the models came, tottering on their towering platform clogs in endless suede or tuxedo or Lurex print flares, all the better to emphasize both height and length.

There were sequined long-sleeve T-shirts with camouflage sparkle flares, miniskirts in metallic jacquard under cropped squared-off jackets, braided silver leather thigh-high dresses, and lots of sheer tulle underslips - and then an utterly confounding series of evening skirts and trousers with 'Night Porter'-like suspenders playing peekaboo on the torso, and baby-doll dresses with sheer bra tops complete with trompe l'oeil bead-encrusted pasties. It culminated in a long white draped jersey goddess gown cut to expose the breasts, bristling with silver flowers.

Mr. Ford can make a woman look more attenuated and dominant than perhaps any other designer, and he achieved that here. But he has also been there, done that, and the dresses, far from being provocative or powerful, just looked silly.

Maybe he was trying to tap into the currently popular rock-vintage vibe; the new generation's desire to get the look the second, or third or fifth, time 'round. Given that Mr. Ford arguably revived it first, you can kind of understand why he might want to own it now.

But in a world where 'Fifty Shades of Grey' pops up on subways everywhere as commuter reading, such in-your-face sex no longer seems transgressive. It seems, and this is a word rarely associated with Mr. Ford, but here we go: old-fashioned. Relevant to another place, and time.