Oscar de la Renta: Ocean Liner Chic

FWD201 Model walks the runway at the Oscar de la Renta show during Fall 2010 Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week in New York on Wednesday, February 17, 2010.[Agencies]

New York – The next time they remake one of those classic Hollywood ocean liner movies, Oscar de la Renta has the very collection to dress the entire female cast.

In a thoroughly elegant fall 2010 collection presented Wednesday, Feb. 17, on New York's Park Avenue, de la Renta opened with a striking double-breasted alpaca coat with dramatic fox fur border - the sort of look they will roll down the liner's boarding plank to welcome.

The designer also managed to distill references from both 1930s Art Deco, like a wonderful gold printed silk faille coat with a stain glass window pattern, and 1980s glamour with big-shouldered platinum lame columns, into these clothes.

The mood was patrician throughout, but never overly stiff, thanks in part thanks to some clever styling, like using checkerboard tights and tam o'shanter fox and mink caps. This designer's response to the recession is clear; when the going gets tough, the chic get classier.

Now then, for a card playing movie scene in first class, the beautiful gold digger can wear the splendid olivine silk faille dress with dexterously placed vertical darts, and for the captain's cocktail when the ship docks in St Tropez, a remarkable point d'esprit tiered dress.

De la Renta's color palette was also uncannily good, as was his astute ability to mix striking contrasting hues like cinnamon with gold or violet with rust.

There was the odd note; Russian model Natasha Poly clearly looked cross about wearing an overly tight pair of embroidered bullfighter's pants, understandably as they made her look like she had gained 10 pounds. And piling on make up on beautiful young models is never a smart idea. It does not render them more sophisticated, just more tired looking.

However, these were minor kinks in an assured display from de la Renta, uptown America's classiest designer.