Anyone who followed fashion in the late 1980s will remember tripping down to lofts in SoHo to see Isaac Mizrahi or Stephen Sprouse, or uptown to the madhouse of Seventh Avenue and 40th Street, amid the dress-rack pilots and the socialites gliding out of limousines, to see Marc Jacobs, when he was still at Perry Ellis, or, up at 550 Seventh Ave., Michael Kors. It isn't with any hideous sense of nostalgia that one recalls those designers. After all, Mizrahi closed his doors. Sprouse did a Peter Pan. Todd Oldham bowed out, too.
Fame lasts for no one.
Adrover has heaps of patience. Money, too, though it's uncertain if his financial backer, the Pegasus Apparel Group, can create a brand out of a designer who a year ago was salvaging fabric off the streets. A larger question is whether Adrover's clothes have a compelling story to tell. There was a moment early in the show when one thought that Adrover was merely giving his audience a taste of inspiration, and that the flowing robes and jangling music would eventually morph into Western tailoring and the harder street rhythms of New York, which Adrover understands so well. But it did not happen.