Based on feedback he’s been getting as a CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund finalist and his sponsorship of the Frick Young Fellows Ball, where he saw how the attendees wore his clothes, Bach Mai said he wanted to show “a really grounded sense of [my] glamor as opposed to doing something super fantastical.” That was going to be a challenge from the start because Mai, a fashion obsessive who is steeped in fashion history, naturally gravitates toward dramatic gestures and opulence.
In a pre-show interview Mai said he was working with circles and squares, both in the making of the clothes and as motifs. The designer was all over the polka-dot trend; he used a printed mikado for a short and swingy flamenco style-dress and he over-embroidered circles of celadon-colored sequins on a black and white houndstooth. Most dramatically, Mai cut Swiss cheese holes—which he filled in with transparent fabric—into his finale dress. Both its silhouette and the way its inner construction was revealed were intended to be a tribute to Charles James.
With so many eyes on his work, Mai wanted to show both range and a slightly relaxed vibe. “People think about us so much for dresses and gowns, but we do very well with jackets and outerwear,” he said. Enter McCardell-esque shirt dresses, and, inexplicably, sequined track shorts with a matching jacket—and these right after a coat made of a “dissolving” Glen plaid to which they had no connection. Mai’s best use of this typical menswear fabric, in wool, was a bias-cut halter-dress with a draped back that showed what he learned from John Galliano. What was intended to be insouciant styling, such as throwing a deconstructed coat made of men’s fabric over a gown, fell flat, in part because the dress appeared to be wearing the model.
Perhaps the quality that most defines Mai as a person and a designer is his contagious sense of exuberance (which sometimes gets in the way of another e-word, editing). This was in full, glorious display in a bubble-backed citrine opera coat, its fullness caught with a valentine red ribbon.