Johanna Ortiz brought her resort collection to New York with a launch at the upscale Casa Cruz restaurant/private club that opened late last year . In a room on the fifth floor, paintings of tropical foliage adorned the walls, models stood in a frame, dancing and talking to each other. Immediately the eye was drawn to a figure-fitting long-sleeved column dress in a dusty pink translucent fabric with embroidered stripes of lavender sequins, and a tulle wine gown in an abstract pattern formed by delicate embroidery.
“This season is a cross between ‘ and ’90’,” Ortiz explains, looking around environment of. “I wanted to bring something different, instead of ruffles and volume and prints.” Her silhouette was definitely more streamlined and closer to the body. “I’m ‘drawing’ when I’m dressing and fitting the models, so everything comes from the fabric, not the sketches,” she adds. As a result, the dresses in the collection are body-hugging and sexy without trying too hard, and many of them have been further tailored to reveal more or less of the skin, or to emphasize different parts of the body with button clips that can be fastened at will. Her signature The palm print at , was reduced to a tonal polka-dot detail on a silk slip dress.
She didn’t avoid the prints entirely, she just approached them with a deeper 3D shot. There was the aforementioned sequin embroidered disco slip dress, and there was a silk jacquard densely embellished with gold thread, which turned out to be almost as airy as cotton voile. She used it on a skirt that featured a sweetheart necklace with a “bow” detail on the back that extended to the floor. “I’ve always thought that everything has to be packable, you have to be able to take it with you. It has to be light,” she adds. Another striking dress, with bell sleeves and a cutout around the belly, was embellished with ornate floral embroidery, including sequins, raffia and beads in shades of pink and orange, matching the burgundy they were worn on Silk complements each other perfectly.
