In this strangest of seasons where everyone felt the pressure to reinvent themselves, and a great variety of reactions to that pressure have been on display. The designers who have been the most interesting to watch have been designers who have a fairly traditional, and therefore commercially acceptable, aesthetic. They didn’t need to change for cash but they still had to not appear insensitive. Everyone under the Bryant Park circus this season seemed to change at least a little, simply because they knew that everything else had changed…a lot. So it was with Rebecca Taylor, she used large amounts of knitwear for the first time and also tried some changes in shape and structure. The collection had some very nice pieces and she smartly did not abandon her clientèle, providing plenty of airy florals and quirky combinations. I did have a problem with how some of her cuts handled high volume at the shoulders and down through the midsection. Usually designers balance a lot of upper positive space with tightly sculptured negative space or an equal volume of material somewhere else. This keeps the garment form appearing top heavy or puffy. Taylor’s pieces did not accomplish this and as a result some of them looked inflated and odd. Breaking new ground is tough, especially when your stitching hand is forced by elements outside of your control. All in all I can’t fault Taylor to much as she really had no choice but to change something, anything or appear as if she was the last girl dancing alone at a party.