A collaboration with artist Gary Baseman brought paintings on the back of jackets, bags and sometimes on models' legs as tattoos.
Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons reproduced the human skull as wallpaper prints on cotton, as mesh-embedded cutouts on the back of jackets, and as an inspiration for fake-leather blazers reduced to skeletal strips.
And by hiking up the back of jackets, including a fine one in colonial khaki piped in brown leather, he gave a leaner, more elegant line to the sports mesh tank tops underneath.
There were hints of Africa in faded stripes, and in ivory beads that traced out a circle motif on the backs of jackets.
At the end of the affair, the ladies were draped in horse-blanket scarves embroidered with their initials, a flourish reminiscent of the first names — Georgia May, Hiao, Irina — embroidered on the backs of jackets at Rag & Bone in New York.
"It's not the Raf I understand," said Ms. Lerfel, who found the use of zippers — set in wide black strips and worked into the front or backs of jackets and cotton tunics — tricky.
Freyeisen has also screen printed one artist's painting onto the backs of jackets.
When they finished, they linked arms and circled a fire, singing as officers tugged arms and hair and the backs of jackets.
He showed black and blue tailored pieces, some in leather or denim, with random wisps of colored fabric unexpectedly peeking out from the collar of a sleeveless jacket here, or pinned to the back of a jacket there.
The vent is the open seam in either the back of the jacket or the sides, used to allow the jacket to hang loosely and make the trouser pockets available to the wearer of the jacket.
