Ripping the Collections: Uli, Part Zwei

This dress is growing on us. At first glance, we weren't so sure that this was flattering to a woman's body and truth be told, it probably wouldn't be for anyone over a size 4, but it has a great clingy, sexy, curvy quality to it. This is such a godawful cliche at this point, but Uli "really knows a woman's body" (we hope so, she lives in one).

Kind of a clunker. Not only is it too typical for Uli, it's too evocative of her last challenge dress. It's an okay dress, but way too sheer. Under the lights it was tootie-riffic. The silver trim bumps it up a notch.

HOT! MEGA-HOT. Even our pants moved when this came down the runway.

Heidi agrees.

That is a total "I covet" face. You can see her doing the math. "Let's see, I'm dropping this baby in late November and I can usually shed the weight and see my abs again after about 6 days, so...Holidays in St. Tropez!"

This is the only look that we flatout didn't like in her collection. It seemed like the color just came out of nowhere, the front and back parts of the skirt don't even look like they're connected, making it seem like a very long loincloth and the contrasting fabric around the bottom of the top is just a hair too thick, cutting her in half.

Then there's the "bone" (or whatever it is) trim. The use of the heavy trim was a through-line for the whole collection but on a couple of the dresses, this one being the most obvious, the trim looked way too heavy for such a light, airy fabric. It's to the credit of Uli's construction skills that she was able to fix such heavy trim on the dresses and not distort the lines, but on this dress in particular it was too much, to the point of distraction.

We both had the same thought when this came down the runway. "Didn't we just see this dress?" It's fine - and even expected - to have variations on a theme in a collection, but when you've only got 12 pieces to show they probably shouldn't be so similar. It is gorgeous though and we love the contrasting fabric on the bottom.

Nazri, you fabulous creature, our television is depressed that you no longer grace it with your presence.

For those who always ask "Why do the models walk like that?" take a look at the bottom half of that dress. She's not standing in front of a wind machine, people. That fabric is flowing and swirling and moving solely through the power of her hips. Come the energy crisis, we should just hook models up to a generator and make them walk up and down a runway. You could power a small city.

Anyway, the dress. Y'know, this just isn't doing it for us the way it's supposed to. Don't get us wrong, it's a pure impact dress and a good one, but Lorenzo's first thought was "J Lo Versace Grammy dress," and Tom's first thought was "Why is she wearing a chili pepper around her neck?"

It took us a while to figure it out. From a design and construction point of view it's a perfectly fine, even beautiful dress but that's not where the impact comes from. It's the print and if you don't like the print or the print's just not doing it for you, then the impact is lessened greatly.

In the end, it was an exciting, polished and surprising collection. The biggest surprise was that her patented flowy print dresses were not the most interesting things coming down the runway. As cohesive as the solids were, her prints were all over the place and the colors didn't come together the way they should have. Some of the models looked like they wandered in from a different show. Still, as a collection it was absolutely gorgeous and while we're not shedding any tears about being forced to watch the finale at the TRESemmé party, there's a part of us that wishes we could have sat on the couch with our best gals just to hear them gasp at each dress.


[Photos: FirstView]


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