American Vintage - Fall/Winter 2010-2011

The American Vintage t-shirts may have been considered too transparent until recently, but the "visible lingerie" trend combined with their rather successful Fall/Winter 2010-2011 Collection might give cause to reconsider.

Good wine is not the only thing that gets better with time. Certain promising smaller labels have also been proposing collections that, over the years, are increasingly complete; they have been doing this by contenting themselves with intelligently developing their basic concept.

This is particularly the case with American Vintage who began 6 years ago with a few 100% cotton t-shirts, and today is offering a complete wardrobe, in complete osmosis with the clean casual aesthetic dear to the label's founder, Michaël Azoulay.

Since then, other than the now sought-after t-shirts (for the same reason for which they were so criticized in the past), their boutiques now offer a whole range of soft, pragmatic and simple knitwear.

At a time when we aspire - after the successive waves of bling-bling and 80s/90s revivals - to something a bit more classical, making place in our wardrobes for basics, it seems that the American Vintage collection, with its easy-to-wear volumes and a skin-caressing coziness, is exactly what we need to fulfill our vows of fashion sobriety.

Between the long cosy vests, the shorter, more retro, knitted ones, sweater dresses needing only to be belted by a thin strip of leather, skirts buttoned up the front or even the large, subtly feminine shirts, many are the pieces of the fall/winter collection that make us want to try them on. Not to mention the color range that, from golden honey to cornflower blue to chestnut brown, matches the different tints in the air for the next season.

The looks proposed in the label's look book often lack a bit of spice, yet we would be wrong to make a big deal about that; it is rare that a collection composed uniquely of basics succeeds in giving off a real twist.

To circumvent this pitfall, all that is needed is to simply avoid following the American Vintage stylists' suggestions to the letter; better to dip into this collection to find something to go with the stronger pieces of fall 2010.