Tim Van Steenbergen says he’s inspired by the lady gardener in her flower garden at her luxury countryside weekend home with “her boyfriend’s sweater loosely knotted around her waist.” Well I find Steenbergen’s collection inspired me to want to lounge in dark brown leather sofa with dry Manhattan clinking the ice cubes in a heavy crystal glass stained red on the rim from a dainty touch of lipstick, while my ‘boyfriend’ (in France we’d say amant) in the next room taps away at his poetic odes to my beauty and charm on an old type writer while his cigarette smokes curls around his fingers… and then we go out for a Sunday afternoon drive in our 1931 Bugatti, perhaps off to play a double set of tennis… But I digress!

Set on Sunday at noon, at the Bataclan, a well known and well frequented Parisian night club and music venue, Tim Van Steenbergen let out his lady gardeners one by one to face the cameras. The sensibility in each piece shows a gracious range of textures and an inherent lightness to their wearing. Lovely folded leathers gleam dully with a comfortable appeal, bright, silky turquoise and bold colored headbands contrasted with the bright red lipstick on the models, airy feather accessories and a little fur add a soft touch, mousseline pieces wafted behind the models like a sweet perfume that one detects as she walks by. Prints and smooth colors like tobacco, gray, greens and beige, crêpe wool, linens all draped on this lady, this muse of flowers and luxury. Sometimes the floral aspect could almost be seen directly in the clothing itself, through amply layered folds and fancy hats with tufts of what could be thoguht of as fauna. Maybe she’s just smelling the flowers and not actually digging in the dirt this SS2011 Steenbergen woman. I imagine she has a gardener to do the planting.