Raw Emotional State. Eckhaus Latta AW23

February 13, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Jon Gries – aka The White Lotus‘ Greg – cameo in Eckhaus Latta‘s autumn-winter 2023 fashion show caused a social media hysteria. Is this how Greg lives his life after Tanya’s death on that unfortunate boat trip, walking the runway for New York’s coolest designers and just minding his own business wearing a chunky knitted sweater and a pair of very good-looking linen cargo pants? Nobody ever predicted Greg would become a fashion darling. Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta know a thing about creating fashion moments, without ever ignoring the clothes and their mind-blowing execution. The new collection came from a raw emotional state, and you could tell that. Jersey dresses, tops, and jackets had inside-out seams that were left unfinished to create little horizontal slashes across the body; layered black mesh dresses and shirts made from cotton had a coarser, more natural hand that felt less plastic-y against the body. Tops made from shearling were left unfinished to show their beauty in a natural state. “This season there was a want for a certain kind of hardness,” Eckhaus said. “There’s a kind of moodiness, not in a pessimistic way, but maybe on edge, an uneasy feeling that we are curious to play with,” Latta continued. The clothes felt urgent. This was a collection about protection, defiance, and most importantly, control, but as the show progressed, the color palette began shifting away from darkness. A moss green overcoat gave way to a brown and green pieced shearling top worn with a pair of wide leg jeans with painted stripes in shades of green, blue, orange and black, and shoes decked out in primary colors. A gorgeous pink oversized bomber jacket was hand knit in Bolivia and paired with a wide wale corduroy skirt of the same shade that zipped off at the front and back. “We’re thinking of things that come together and come apart, and letting things be mutable as garments,” Eckhaus said. The journey towards the light continued with a natural linen button down tucked into a matching wrap skirt of asymmetrical length. Some of the best looks in the collection came out towards the end, like the pieces made from a sort of coated gray vinyl which takes on a marbleized effect through regular wear and tear. That was turned into dresses and skirts and, most winningly, a really great pair of jeans. Each season, Eckhaus Latta includes a poem or a text in their show notes. This season’s ended with “Be Fluidly Brutal and Find God.” Interpret it the way you feel like it.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Tactility. Eckhaus Latta SS23

September 12, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

The vibrant Eckhaus Latta spring-summer 2023 show took place in one of those lush and beautiful gardens that you can’t believe actually exist in the middle of the city. As models walked out in geometric metallic knit tops that glistened in the sun like tinsel, their faces shiny like doughnuts (turns out it was a peel-off face mask), it was clear the buoyant mood felt before the presentation wasn’t just on account of people running into each other after not seeing them for a while, but it was what Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta actually wanted everyone to feel. “I think this season we felt rather optimistic and wanted that to be expressed within the clothing,” Eckhaus said backstage after the show. “I feel like there’s been this general sense of apathy that we, our community, or just our friends have been feeling,” Latta added, picking up the beat immediately. “This is kind of an attempt to be like, ‘It is still chaos. The world still feels a little fucked, but let’s have fun.’” There was joy in Hari Nef’s cream slip dress, adorned with embroidered threads covered in beads that click-clacked this way and that as she walked through the grass. Musician Ethel Cain, wearing a proper ecru cropped bouclé jacket (and matching wrap-around skort) with a “Fear no plague” tattoo right in the middle of her sternum, was cheeky. No, wait, actually cheeky was Jacob Bixenman’s burgundy bubble polo shirt, worn with what looked to be a one-leg pant that exposed exactly half of the model’s buttocks. Silhouettes were slightly oversized and gave the illusion of being askew; attention was paid to the back of the garments as much as the front with image placement, interesting pockets, and other details. “It’s a sense of wanting that fullness,” Eckhaus said. “I feel like we’re so accustomed to images now – the front image – but clothing is 360, and we wanted to have that juxtaposition of what you’re experiencing on the front of the body versus the back, having it feel more rounded or having different types of energy that move back and forth.” Every look appealed to the senses, with textures that were begging to be touched and played with, like cool netting turned into a long dress with a straight neck and ruched detail on the front, or floral-embroidered trousers with what looked to be a built-in skirt on top and tassels running down the sides. “We wanted a lot of tactility in the collection with the textiles that we’re using across the board,” Eckhaus said. “Whether it was how images were placed on clothing, how materials transformed, like in the knotted pieces and the bubble fabrics, but not getting too – as we always joke – ‘project-y,’” he said, laughing, before adding, “But then I feel like, if it does get project-y, whatever. We’ve been doing this for a while, and we feel really confident in the times when we do have those gestures.”

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Independence. Eckhaus Latta AW22

February 13, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

It’s another anniversary this New York Fashion Week: Eckhaus Latta celebrates its first 10 years. It’s not that easy to define this brand in one word – it’s raw and elusive, sexy and gender-fluid, over-sized, and then all of the sudden super clingy and sensual, spontaneous, kind of minimal, but not really noting all the arty handwork the brand loves to add to their collections. When Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta arrived in New York in 2012, their label was immediately deemed “crafty” and “indie”. After a decade in business (the irony: many people still consider the brand as “emerging”), Eckhaus Latta is one of New York’s strongest standing independent labels, with two brick-and-mortar stores, an e-commerce business, and admirers from all over the world. Its anniversary show at the former Essex Market affirmed that after a decade of independence, Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta are still charting their own course in fashion. The autumn-winter 2022 show was filled with Eckhaus Latta signatures. Sheer, glittery knits were slashed open at the back; minidresses were cut on a square edge; and tailoring was slit to reveal a spine, a thigh, or a breast. Worn by the brand’s friends and collaborators, including David Moses, Hari Nef, Maryam Nassir Zadeh, Thistle Brown, and Paloma Elsesser, the collection was a summation of everything Eckhaus Latta has built. It was cool, unfussy ready-to-wear with undertones of kink, craft, and community. It still is all these things, without ever labeling itself. “We didn’t want to be nostalgic or retrospective,” said Eckhaus postshow. “But we did want to bring back the things that we loved from our early collections, the handwork especially,” added Latta. The chain-mail pieces that closed the show, graphically sliced up to be equal parts erotic and acerbic, were handmade in the brand’s atelier. It was well balanced with the label’s more affordable garments. May Eckhaus Latta’s next 10 years be about furthering the bond between its tender handwork and commercial hits.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Feel Free. Eckhaus Latta SS22

September 12, 2021 | Design & Culture by Ed

What Eckhaus Latta sent out this season was one of their most concise and quintessential collections ever. “It’s about feeling more free,” said Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta. “Really feeling yourself, coming out of the past year-and-a-half and wanting to feel sexy and confident and free.” Garments were filmy, thin dust-colored layers of nylon layered together, ivory cotton dresses and bodysuits with oval cutouts and hundreds of snaps, and airy shirts in lime and faux leather jackets in cinnamon left open. Pieces were named after transient, erotic words: vapor turtleneck, undone jumpsuit, wisp dress. The torsos were out, the nipples were out, and in a statement of intent: models wore black thongs instead of the industry-standard beige. This collection felt like a Helmut Lang tribute, even if this wasn’t the intention. Back to the designers – both Latta and Eckhaus had a reckoning with their own bodies this past year; she became a first-time mother, he had a breakup and then the requisite hot boy summer. “We’re going through different things, but we both have a desire to just be fucking real,” said Latta.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Grounded Approach. Eckhaus Latta AW21

March 3, 2021 | Design & Culture by Ed

Like many people during this period, Zoe Latta and Mike Eckhaus had a mood rollercoaster. As the duo explained on a Zoom call with Vogue that bummed-out vibe provided a creative spark, suggesting that their focus ought to be on comforting shapes and textures and a somber palette. The Eckhaus Latta duo went on to report that, thankfully, they are feeling more optimistic now – and that they are eager to get back to fashion business as usual, with live events and people around, but in the meantime, like the rest of us, they’re making do. Perhaps accidentally, it’s that sentiment that served as the red thread through their autumn-winter 2021 outing. The most arresting idea the designers explored this time out was the deconstruction of familiar silhouettes in ways that created artful voids in the clothes or that made them adaptable into different forms. It was a poetic expression of our current state, a year into the pandemic. Eckhaus and Latta also played with optical patterns, like trippy rib knits and a black-and-white jacquard, and with ways of giving a sense of hand to synthetic fabrics. The collection was small, but thorough; every look was wholly considered, from form to detail. Perhaps the collection’s most admirable quality, though, was its grit – though we often look to fashion for fantasies of the future, that kind of grounded approach is necessary. This Eckhaus Latta line-up not only captured the general mood, but somehow it made it look… cool.