A New York Moment. Proenza Schouler AW23

February 12, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

What a New York moment. Chloe Sevigny opened the autumn-winter 2023 Proenza Schouler show. She’s worn Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez’s clothes since the beginning, even a couple of times to Met Gala; they were New York ingenues together 20 years ago. But this wasn’t an anniversary show, the designers insisted. They said they’ve been taking stock, thinking about the friends and customers they’ve made over two decades. “This is our most personal collection yet,” said McCollough. “It was less revolving around a theme, more looking at the actual women in our lives: What is it they want?” Like Sevigny and Olympia Scarry, who walked later a few looks later, the women in McCollough and Hernandez’s lives have grown up, and grown out of some of the Proenza Schoulerisms they’ve honed over the years. Prints were kept to a minimum here. The ones that did turn up were remnants from past collections, and only appeared as the linings of dresses, visible through a side-slit in the midi-length skirt, or on straps pulled off the shoulders and left to peplum at the waist. There was no room for ruffles or bows, either. The only real embellishment they used was white pom pom fringe on a black velvet dress, but it was mostly obscured by the charcoal wool skirt that their stylist Camilla Nickerson, another friend they mentioned by name, layered over it. Other signatures stayed in the picture, but in updated versions. A pair of narrowly cut velvet shirt dresses made with dyed ice cubes that dripped their deep colors from neck to hem were evocative of their best-selling velvet tie-dye dresses of 2018, only subtler, more adult. The spongy, stretchy evening numbers with the sequins “baked in” were elaborations of simpler t-shirt dresses from a couple of pre-collections ago. In the studio Hernandez said, “it’s about using our ingredients and not throwing it all out and starting from scratch every season.” If you looked closely you could see that the short sleeves were differently shaped. Other knits were constructed in a similarly askew way; they twisted across the body, elevating them out of the ordinary. Over sounds by the musician Arca, Sevigny’s voice was on the soundtrack, reading “diary entries” written by the author Ottessa Moshfegh, with whom they’ve collaborated before, “kind of like an inner monologue.” Clothes-wise, the idea was to make an art of the everyday. By adding vertical zippers to the back of blazers that flashed a hint of skin but also enhanced ease of movement, by whipping up a hoodie in the softest, plushest knit, and by cutting “jeans” in a glossy gold leather, a nod to Helmut Lang, a few of whom’s runway looks were surely pinned to the mood board along with photos of their Sevigny et al.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Total Magic. Rodarte AW23

February 12, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Rodarte‘s return to New York Fashion Week was a magical treat we all needed. A banquet was set with candle-lit chandeliers, baskets of fruits, and multi-tiered cakes, all covered in silver glitter and placed on silver tablecloths. This was a brunch for Rodarte fairies that were about to fly down the runway. “For whatever reason, this season we were like, ‘we wanna do something inspired by fairies.’” Laura and Kate Mulleavy explained. “Our mom’s an artist so we asked her, ‘Can you draw us some fairies?’” She did. Her colored pencil illustrations were then blown up and placed across airy caftans with feather or ruffled chiffon trims. Very whimsy and very witchy, as well as weird and romantic. This being a Rodarte show, the fairies weren’t just fairies. They were gothic fairies (in Siouxsie Sioux-inspired eye makeup and black lipstick). Laura and Kate have always had a penchant for finding beauty in darkness, but the darkness wasn’t so much horror as it was maybe a sense of time that’s passed. But whatever it was, the gothic fairies led the Mulleavys to a collection full of glamorous evening gowns. A series of languid jersey numbers with dramatic bell sleeves opened the show. They were followed by different versions in burnout velvet, embellished with sequins or with floral appliqués, the sleeves dragging shredded cheese cloth that had been dyed black; one of the designers’ favorite old techniques that they brought back this season. The Mulleavys also brought back their signature cobweb knits, made by hand from a collage of materials and textures: the one in shades of yellow with bits of silver felt joyous. Elsewhere, black satin bias-cut dresses had a 1930s feel with Victorian details like V-shaped lace insets, velvet mutton-sleeve bodies with white lace trim, and white lace capelets. Four models wore bulbous shapes made entirely from metallic fringe. They were powerful and fun, and the way they caught the light as the models walked down the runway brought an element of whimsy and fantasy to the collection. The silver one was added to the lineup last minute, after the silver banquet was suggested for the set design. “You have to stay open; every day you have a new creative point and until the last minute you’re still pushing to make it better and more your story,” Laura said. She was talking about the silver gown, but she could’ve been speaking about their creative approach as a whole. “This show, to me, is exactly who we are as designers,” Kate added.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Cupid’s Door. Alexander Wang AW23

February 9, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

And just like that, it’s New York Fashion Week. The first show on the schedule, at least for a brief moment, made you feel like in the old days. 10 years ago, in 2013, Alexander Wang‘s show was also an opener in New York’s biggest fashion event. Anna Wintour sat in the f-row, hot music was bumping all over the rave-y venue, Instagram was just starting to be a thing, TikTok was non-existent. Wang was the city’s favourite fashion darling – and he was about to show his first collection for Balenciaga in Paris (anyone remembers that?). But we are in 2023, and the world-wide mood is different, even if NYFW does it best to look like in the pre-pandemic times. And Alexander Wang is no longer a new-gen designer with no controversies attached to his name.

In between May 2019, the time of Wang’s last NYFW show, and now, the designer faced allegations of sexual misconduct that threw the future of his business into question. He made a public apology and his accusers announced they were “moving forward“. He put on a show in Los Angeles’s Chinatown in April of 2022. Honestly, nobody cared to look at it. Yesterday’s New York comeback had a dramatic tension: will anyone care this time? It seems the fashion world forgave Wang, and the designer somehow managed to dive back into the city’s scene of good PR and viral people. A promo spot on his Instagram Reels starring Anna Delvey, the socialite fraudster under house arrest in an East Village apartment, seemed to suggest he wasn’t proceeding from a chastened place. Cheeky is more like it. That fits with the collection’s theme. He gave it a name, Cupid’s Door, and dressed the location in boudoir-ish style, with dusty pink velvet curtains and a mesmeric zebra-stripe carpet; lighting gels that cast a red glow over the whole place. Sexy is enjoying a comeback of its own in the wake of the pandemic. Julia Fox walked the show dressed in a barely-there nude dress and and man’s jacket, like the modern-day version of Carrie Bradshaw in Sex & The City‘s season 1. Lace-edged camisoles, low-slung python print pants, boxer briefs peeking over the tops of waistbands – all of that was here, too. No sight of novelty, clearly. Rather, a lot of ideas many other designers in New York went through in the last couple of seasons.

The show was divided into three acts: the opening women’s section featured a lot of denim and faux fur in a variety of textures and silhouettes, very downtown style. Backstage he mentioned Wong Kar Wai films like 2046 and In the Mood for Love, which might have prompted the dressy vibes. Next came a men’s grouping that was quite cool and simple: athleisure-y items like sweatpants and sweatshirts in soft, high pile fabrics, alongside cropped vests and more animal print pants. The ending was the weakest point of the collection. A series of silk fringe dresses suspended from heart shapes built on a foundation of sheer net that revealed as much as they concealed. Eveningwear was never Wang’s thing, and that previously mentioned short stint at Balenciaga didn’t help with crafting that. The thing is, the tumultuous period the designer went through eventually revealed the basic fact that fashion has dozens of other designers who can fill the “sexy” niche in a much better and fresher way than Wang. The autumn-winter 2023 line-up had its ups, but in overall, it seems to be nothing more than Insta-friendly styling.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Heroes. Marc Jacobs SS23

February 4, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Marc Jacobs held his latest fashion show in the Park Avenue Armony, a week before New York Fashion Week officially begins. Even if the king of New York’s fashion scene doesn’t return to the event, the entire outing felt very New York. The giant room was pitch dark and almost empty, save for a single row of chairs and spotlights illuminating the space in front of them. A solo violinist, Jennifer Koh, played a portion of Philip Glass’s “Einstein on the Beach.” Jacobs gave the collection a name – “Heroes” – and included a Vivienne Westwood quote in his show notes more earnest than irreverent: “Fashion is life-enhancing, and I think it’s a lovely, generous thing to do for other people.” Westwood died in December at 81, and when she passed Jacobs posted a black-and-white photo of the legendary designer as a young woman. In it, she wears her bleached blond hair in spikes and a button-down stenciled with the words: “Be reasonable, demand the impossible.” At the time, Jacobs wrote that he was heartbroken, saying, “I continue to learn from your words, and all of your extraordinary creations.” This collection was an emotionally charged homage to the “godmother of punk,” from the top of the models’ peroxide wigs to the bottom of their platform shoes. Naomi Campbell, you’ll remember, famously fell in her platforms at Westwood’s autumn 1993 show. But Jacobs has learned much more than that from the late designer. The “tit tops” of Westwood’s Pirate collection circa 1981, in which she twisted t-shirt fabric into nipples, were reinterpreted as casual knit leotards and nipped and tucked sheath dresses. Here, the romantic silhouettes that Westwood lifted from old master paintings, with their bustles and bustiers, got a dressing down in military surplus, heavy on the cargo pockets. Jacobs recreated her signature volumes by turning a shirt into a skirt and tying its sleeves in the back, or by dressing models in upside-down jackets, hems dramatically framing their faces. A few of the models walked past with their arms crossed, pantomiming Westwood’s defiant audacity. Long-line coats with the geometric patchworks of quilts may not be of direct lineage, but their DIY-ness chimes with Westwood’s punk ethos. They’re special pieces, not precious because of the materials Jacobs used – they actually looked quite humble – but because of their remarkable handwork. Tinged with sadness, but also with moving, creative expression, this collection proves again that no one does it like Marc.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Harbor of Fineness. The Row AW23

January 29, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

The Row‘s intensely refined autumn-winter 2023 read-to-wear collection matched the couture ambience of the last week. Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Olsen didn’t show in Paris, but dropping a new collection in such specific time-frame speaks for itself. The craft, the tailoring, the materials, the silhouettes. The ultra-luxurious and elegantly-understated vision of the The Row woman (and man) is absolutely haute. The new season offering sees the Olsens’ timeless regulars (masculine boxy suits, cashmere coats with shawl-like capes, over-sized crisp cotton shirts – very Lydia Tár!) combined with an ease of flowing shapes (see the floor-sweeping black skirt styled with a boyish blazer) and chic, Armani-like narrowings at the waist. The colors are all about earthy neutrals – another The Row favorite. Trends come and go, but The Row is a peaceful harbor of eternal fineness.