Fashion was alive with the sound of music on Thursday with a Tyrolean-flovored spring-summer 2012 ready-to-wear display at Carven.
Models sported lederhosen short shorts with starched white shirts, and abbreviated leather dresses with flippy skirts were emblazoned with the little metal cutouts found on Alpine cows' bells.
It even sounded a bit like an Alpine pasture. Above the din of the soundtrack, came the jangle of little brass bells which, hung from the models' shoes, jangled as they walked.
Happily, the Bavarian influence wasn't served up straight, but rather distilled through the nerdy-sexy schoolgirl look that has become the label's signature style under French designer Guillaume Henry. The high-rise shorts and flippy mermaid shirts couldn't be have been shorter if they'd tried, but their overt sexiness was counterbalanced by the sort of willful dowdiness of some of the other pieces.
It was hard to imagine anyone besides very young girls with very long legs and very deep pockets being able to pull off many of the looks in Thursday's collection.
But perhaps that was precisely the point.