En Boca Quedó. Luar SS25

September 12, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Luar is New York Fashion Week’s lifebelt. Just like Marc Jacobs did until 2020, now its Raul López who’s closing the week, and he does it with powerful bravado and vivacious attitude. His spring-summer 2025 fashion show – taking place outdoors at Rockefeller Plaza – was a brilliant finale moment after days of rather dull, plain-looking fashion shows and collections that said nothing. The designer had named the collection “En Boca Quedó,” a Dominican saying usually used when leaving a conversation that means “I’m leaving, but now you’ll speak of me“. “It can be a form of shade, but also very loving, in a funny haha shade way,” Raul explained. The dramatic silhouettes that walked the evening runway definitely voiced the “en boca quedó” spirit: taffeta pieces cut to hulking proportions that served as a kind of armor while completely revealing the body underneath; sumptuous, oversized leather jacket-dress with oversized curved sleeves and in leopard printed pony-hair; and the voluminous ball-like trench-coat that was a beautiful middle finger to the “quiet luxury” cliché. Madonna who sat in the front row loves Luar. You should love it, too.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Sacrum & Profanum. Colleen Allen SS25

September 11, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Emerging brands like Colleen Allen keep New York Fashion Week’s heart beating. But lets note that Allen can be hardly called an emerging designer with an impressive portfolio of working at some of New York’s finest institutions: Raf Simons’s Calvin Klein and The Row. But these two aren’t defining her aesthetically, as Colleen has proved in her debut collection and also in her sophomore season. Spring-summer 2025 offering is all about a play with lightness and draping. You’ve got very sensual, sheer numbers, and then you’ve got stunning, velvet-y drapings that hug the body. Some of the pieces – like the ankle-length, white dress with turtleneck – have a pastoral, even clerical feel about them, but then then the ecclesiastical regality is twisted and subverted with sexy lace of hemlines and body-revealing slits of blouses and jackets. It’s also worth noting that Colleen has a brilliant sense of color: just look the the opening shade of tangerine. Retailers, here’s a brand to buy into.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Austere Chic. Phoebe Philo Edit 3

September 10, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Phoebe Philo is back with her Edit 3 collection, which launched today in form of first, capsule delivery. The latest, autumnal offering isn’t distant from Philo’s earlier design ventures at her eponymous, highly elusive label, but surely does deliver a sense of sophisticated chic – and style. Those are two things that one could hardly navigate anywhere during the on-going New York Fashion Week. But in case of Philo, there’s also the feeling of rough austerity that makes her designs look commanding and important. And distinct. The coats with detachable capes and leather jackets are investment pieces for many, many years ahead, just like white, crisp shirting and chunky, black sweater with leather inserts on the sleeves. The designer lets in some experimental twist to a tie-dyed dress that seems to be constructed out of two sweatshirts. One might say that the brand and its designer seem to be stuck in one place – many items from the edit are slightly reworked versions of garments from previous collections. But in the world of ever-changing and endlessly-generated content, content and content, the sense of continuity that Phoebe channels is truly comforting.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Real, Raw, Sexy. Eckhaus Latta SS25

September 10, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

I’ve said it before, I will say it again: the Eckhaus Latta duo have and bring what Helmut Lang had and brought to New York at the turn of millennium. Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta‘s clothes are sexy without trying too hard; they have a sense of style that’s real; and they have that raw honesty about them. Their spring-summer 2025 collection is so far one of the biggest highlights of New York Fashion Week – and has actual clothes one wants to wear (I do!). Eckhaus Latta is a go-to brand for not-so-average knits, and they remained a standout in the latest offering. There’s also the element of playfulness about the labels’ pieces. They invite you to wear them whatever way you want. “I think both of us are very drawn to that sample sale vibe of, ‘there’s something that looks like a pile of rope on a hanger,’” Latta explains. “We’re like, ‘What is it?’ Obviously we have to deal with the idea of hanger appeal, but I think for us, letting these things have a kind of mutability and playfulness, like the scrunches in all these different ways, feels inherent to our curiosity.” Another big thumbs-up goes to the lookbook imagery where you really see how the clothes work on (and with) the body. Of course, there was a fashion show – or rather, a fashion happening – where friends of Eckhaus Latta had dinner and later did an impromptu runway parade. It looked genuinely fun. This brand seems to be one of the few in New York that knows what’s up.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Apparent Ease. Alaïa SS25

September 7, 2024 | Design & Culture by Ed

Alaïa was another show in New York that left me somewhat hungry for more. Pieter Mulier‘s took the Parisian maison to Guggenheim, as a contemporary (and very high-gloss) hommage to Azzedine Alaïa’s 1982 show at the Palladium nightclub. The spring-summer 2025 collection referenced a couple of the master’s knock-out designs: think 2001 couture asymmetric draped number hanging on one strap or the cut-out bustiers that became the brand’s signature (Mulier was evidently inspired by the forms of Frank Lloyd Wright-designed building). The Belgian creative director also invited some ideas that were born in New York: bandeaus and haute “sweatpants” were riffs on Halston’s 1970s jerseys, sculpted puffer jackets were obviously inspired by Charles James, one of Alaïa’s favorite designers. There was lightness and apparent ease about this collection that was absolutely luxe in its execution. And it was an experiment for Mulier, who has created a sort of well-tested comfort-zone in Paris when it comes to his sublime shows there. I just wish he dared to push it a bit more than just referencing familiar and pretty well-known codes of both Alaïa and New York fashion.