In Her Feelings. Khaite AW24

Another season, another Khaite fashion show presented in total darkness. I understand Catherine Holstein likes a mysterious mood, but again, the clothes are barely visible, and the models looked, as Rachel Tashjian wrote in her on-point review, disempowered. The collection had two main running themes: the leathers and the billow-y silhouettes. The bulky shapes of Khaite coats and jackets, with their exaggerated Claude Montana-ish shoulders, generous cowl necklines, and full sleeves evoked the late ’80s and early ’90s, when Holstein would’ve been a young child playing in her mom’s closet. However it was the designer’s newly-found obsession of draping silk gazar the ultimate highlight of this collection. One sculptural top was originally meant to be a dress, but as the model slid into it at the fitting and lifted its hem to put on shoes, Holstein preferred the curving volumes of it bunched up at her hips, and it was reworked at the last minute. “I want women to feel exhilarated when they put on my clothes,” she said. If only that exhilaration was more perceivable in the dead-serious format the Khaite shows are taking.