The mood at Whit‘s Fall 2011 presentation at the Ross Bleckner studio in Chelsea was decidedly playful–the studio was bright and airy, models on pedestals were framed by Bleckner’s abstract colorful paintings and made good on the instructions they were given to be “fun and loose,” dancing in place on their blocks.

The mood follows designer Whitney Pozgay’s inspiration for the collection, which she told us was “the grown-up version of playing dress up in your grandmother’s closet when you were a little girl.” Pozgay was taken with the way that “a little girl playing dress up mixes and matches in such an interesting way that it often looks more refreshing than the way it was supposed to be” (hence the Tavi inspiration).

As for the actual pieces in the collection, they looked like the ultimate finds from grandma’s closet: a brown full mid-calf length skirt with a bird print (there’s the Hitchcock inspiration), a printed sand-washed silk top paired with thick wool trash-bag top pants, faux fur collared hefty winter coats with big brown leather buttons. To cement that “grandma’s closet” feel, models wore cat-eye frames and jewelry from Pozgay’s real life grandmother. And it looked like grandpa’s closet got raided too as delicate bird-print rompers and twisted skirts and shift dresses were paired with oversized grandpa sweaters.