Mercedes Benz Fashion Week 9/11/07- TIBI

Season after season, I enjoy viewing the TIBI collection. Tibi designer and founder, Amy Smilovic, designs a range of bright and interesting prints that match her sense of style, with each collection heavily influenced by Amy’s lifestyle and travels throughout Asia and Europe, including the beaches of Bali, forests of New Zealand and Mediterranean landscape of Capri.

You could almost feel the sunlight in this Spring 2008 collection, featuring a palette exclusively of brown, green and beige mixed with white, with bold patterns that looked exotic and almost tribal. Longer length day dresses and ruffled collars predominated. The look was youthful, but chic and urban, balanced wider tops and cropped jackets belted over wide legged pants, for example, or a long, soft beige cardigan sweater made chic, belted over pants. And, speaking of belts, TIBI featured them in wide and slim versions.

But many of the dresses had nipped-in belted waists with full skirts, that reminded me a bit of the daytime version of the Bill Blass Spring 2008 collection...very demure, a bit more ladylike than previous seasons, with more structure to the clothes than the previous seasons. As "Susie Q" blared from the background, the vibe was back-to-the-50's, but with modern colors and a slightly less structured silhouette. The slightly retro, urban chic look was followed through with very high, very sleek ponytails that swung madly from side to side as the models sashayed down the runway. The makeup was moist and a bit bronzed, with coral/pink lips.