Fernando Garcia travels to Mumbai four times a year and for the Oscar de la Renta Pre-Fall 2019 season, he and Laura Kim have explored traditional Indian menswear shapes, showing skirt-pant combos in lightweight printed silks under Western blazers. It was a new direction for Oscar de la Renta. “Oscar believed in eclecticism in clothes, and so do we,” said Garcia. “We’re not American; we travel a lot for work. It feels natural and instinctual to us to do pieces that feel traveled.”

The eveningwear offering featured sheer tulle “naked dresses,” decorated with metallic gold threading or multicolor floral embellishments, and draped, bias-cut unconstructed numbers came in many iterations. Amid all that softness, an emerald green one-shoulder nipped-and-tucked taffeta party dress.

The evolution that Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia are overseeing at Oscar de la Renta is one that primarily concerns construction with  a certain offhandedness that might be unfamiliar to longtime clients of the label. “So we’re doing it slowly,” said Kim.