Ten years ago, Oscar de la Renta, the go-to designer for women seeking fabulous party dresses, was starting to think about throwing a major party of his own: the 50th anniversary of his fashion house. Before the planning could really start, however, Mr. de la Renta died.
So it was only fitting that on Dec. 17, his dreams were finally realized with a blowout fashion show and celebration in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, where Mr. de la Renta was born, in honor of the brand’s 60th birthday. Even by the standards of today’s traveling show circus, in which fashion brands often seem to one-up one another for most exotic locale, this one was striking because it was also personal.
“So much of what informed his fashion life started right there,” said Alex Bolen, the chief executive of the house and Mr. de la Renta’s stepson-in-law.
More than 500 important clients, retailers, locals, family and friends, including Nicky Hilton Rothschild, Karolina Kurkova and Rebecca Ma (the influencer who posts under the name Becca Bloom and wore Oscar de la Renta for her wedding) all turned out, dressed to sparkle. They were beaded, befeathered and beflowered, gleaming in silver and gold. The national government opened up a historic monument — the Fortaleza Ozama, the oldest fort in the Americas, built in 1503 — for the evening, and the Reverendo Padre Gerardo Remirez, the head of administration for the archdiocese of Santo Domingo, allowed the company to close off his road so the guests in their finery could promenade down it to the show.
A short film commemorated Mr. de la Renta’s life, from his childhood to his time in Paris and the start of his company, as well as the dresses he made for Sarah Jessica Parker, Taylor Swift and Oprah, not to mention almost every first lady since Jackie Kennedy. The Dominican national symphony played his favorite song, “My Way,” and then, to the stately strains of “Bolero,” the show began: a parade of 60 mostly party dresses with hems high, low and everything in between, inspired by the story of the Dominican Republic.
There were day dresses etched with watercolors of the landscape and bubble dresses splashed with hibiscus prints (the hibiscus being the unofficial national flower). Halter dresses trembling with silk fringe and T-shirt dresses made from a mosaic of gold leather squares and strapless dresses made from hundreds of embroidered flowers that had been cut out and hand-stitched back together. Crocheted slip dresses speckled with pearls and palm-print ball gowns. All of them were worn with flat sandals, the better to kick up your heels. Every model was Dominican, and many of their parents were in the audience.
Later the crowd sipped Champagne in tents designed to resemble Mr. de la Renta’s five homes in the Dominican Republic, complete with plush white couches and low wood coffee tables, and otherwise celebrated the allure of a really great dress. Then the Buena Vista Social Club took to the stage and all those dresses started to merengue.
“Oscar used to be asked the question, ‘What is your brand about?’” Mr. Bolen said. “And he said very simple things like, ‘It’s about a pretty dress or a great memory.’ He never took this stuff very seriously. We are trying to do things to help people to live their lives with a sense of joy and fun and happiness.”
“I guess that sounds a little frivolous, and perhaps it is a little frivolous, but we are proud of the fact that we’ve kept doing that,” he continued. “Unlike many brands, we have really tried hard not to change.”
The collection was particularly emotional because it was a homecoming of sorts. “I’ve been crying so much,” said Eliza Reed Bolen, Mr. de la Renta’s stepdaughter and an executive vice president at the company. It was also the final show of Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim as creative directors.
The designers, who were trained by Mr. de la Renta and had taken over not long after his death with the mandate of preserving the spirit of the founder, were leaving to concentrate on their own label, Monse. The collection was, Mr. Garcia said, “our goodbye letter to the house that gave us our careers.” (Mr. Garcia is also from the Dominican Republic, and six of his family members were at the show.)
And it was a love letter to Mr. de la Renta’s signature silhouettes — the bell, the Watteau back, the caftan — and his guiding principle: that clothes should be a tool for, as the film put it, “a life well lived.” Few American brands have survived 60 years, and even fewer have survived the death of the founders and managed to maintain their positions in the industry, rather than be frittered away in licensing deals, like Bill Blass and Geoffrey Beene. New designers will be named next year, Mr. Bolen said. As with Mr. Garcia and Ms. Kim, they are likely to come from within the house, to preserve continuity.
The gala was also, in some ways, a validation of Mr. Bolen’s decision in 2020 to step out of the official show calendar in order to focus on his customers. When most fashion brands came charging back to the old system after lockdowns during the coronavirus pandemic briefly put the ready-to-wear seasons on hold, he went another way.
He (and Mr. Garcia and Ms. Kim) began holding mini trunk shows for customers — and dressing celebrities like Billie Eilish, Pamela Anderson and Lauren Sánchez Bezos for their most high-profile moments, including the Met Gala. Indeed, the Santo Domingo show was only the brand’s second formal show since the Covid-19 lockdowns, and no glossy magazine editors were invited.
“What anyone who doesn’t buy the clothes thinks about the clothes, I just don’t care,” Mr. Bolen said. “If critics love them and our customers hate them, we have failed. And I think all of the commentary from people who actually don’t pull a credit card out can be a distraction to our teams.”
“Thus far, I’m deeply unimpressed with the ability of influencers to move the needle,” he continued. “It’s much more about old-school stuff: sales associates who have relationships with customers, who are trying to recruit new customers. My solution was to talk straight to the people.”
Although Mr. Bolen’s decision to step away from the fashion calendar left a hole in New York Fashion Week, which could use the fairy dust of these frocks and their less fraught sense of self, the strategy appears to be working. Last month was, Mr. Bolen said, a record sales month for the New York store, one of seven that are fully owned. There are plans to open in Chicago as well as to reintroduce shoes. Revenues are now between $125 and $150 million. (When Mr. Bolen joined the company in 2004, he said, revenues were $25 million, and it had no stores and no international presence; now 40 percent of the business is outside North America.)
Just before the show, a pop-up shop was set up in the house Mr. de la Renta owned in the colonial city, complete with an internal courtyard with a plunge pool, where, according to the manager, guests had bought pearl-festooned cocktail frocks and long, chiffon gowns with trailing scarves.
The morning after the show, a re-see was held in a nearby hotel, where attendees could check out the runway looks, the better to start compiling their wish lists. One woman in a floral Oscar de la Renta sundress was busy photographing almost every look on the rails.
“All I see is dresses,” she said, sighing.
Vanessa Friedman has been the fashion director and chief fashion critic for The Times since 2014.
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