Big Chic Energy. Vaquera SS24

September 26, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee opened Paris Fashion Week with a bang, delivering big chic energy with their Vaquera fashion show. The designers emerged for their bows in matching sunglasses, big eye-obscuring shields of the kind worn by A-list celebrities. They said their collection was a consideration of the ways in which stars (and the rest of us) negotiate lives mediated by a 24/7 barrage of cameras. Do you want to be seen or do you want to hide? Is there a difference in a world where everyone is wielding an iPhone? The collection had a couple of gritty Margiela references, especially all the faux fur elements and XXL silhouettes, but in case of Vaquera, it’s never about knocking off, but revisiting their fashion gurus. After opening with a gold fishnet catsuit, the breasts outlined like bullseyes, many of the “normal” looks that followed were split down the back, exposing bra straps and panties. Other looks used underwear as decoration. The pink satin briefs fixed to the front of an otherwise conventional skirt might not have registered as all that outré on the runway, but on the street it’d be a different story. Standing up along the runway, like fans crowding a police barricade at a red carpet or outside a fashion show, the crowd hooted and hollered in appreciation. There aren’t many collections in Paris that deliver Vaquera’s kind of edgy fun. Hopefully, some bold starlet will wear Vaquera’s bleached denim ball gown.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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What’s Hot (7.7.23)

July 7, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Runaway Bride. Vaquera AW23

February 28, 2023 | Design & Culture by Ed

Backstage at their Vaquera fashion show on the first day of Paris Fashion Week, Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee were talking about dreams and nightmares, and how they can become interchangeable as time goes by. “We’re excited about selling commercial things,” DiCaprio said. “But I think this season we weren’t afraid to make things that weren’t necessarily for sales, and to say that that is an integral part of our brand.” Take the fun silvery sequin dresses or the various iterations of the wedding dress. I mean, wearing Vaquera on that special day is quite a statement. Other non-commercial garments were the jeans studded with blunt-ended nails which reportedly weigh a couple of kilograms. Mixed in amongst those punkish pants were more readily wearable pieces in the form of army sweaters and nylon cargos, and a faded black leather peacoat and pants. In the early New York days of Vaquera, back when the brand had a more conceptual direction, they designed polo dresses with pointillist renderings of their designer heroes, Vivienne Westwood among them. She was present in their latest show via an updated version of her infamous “tit top” with twisted and tucked “nipple” details. She’s the proof that you can mix business and non-conformity.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.
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Avantgarde-ness. Vaquera SS23

September 27, 2022 | Design & Culture by Ed

Five years ago, with bold attitude and confidence, Vaquera started out in New York and quickly became the most-talked about and hard to classify emerging brand in town. In 2022, the brand opens Paris Fashion Week and is backed by Dover Street Market, and yet it’s still difficult to put a finger on it. Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee aren’t doing conventional, mainstream fashion, but somehow manage to keep their avantgarde-ness commercially attainable: think great, over-sized jackets and too-cool-to-be-true denim. “We’ve really been pushing toward having more commercial clothing and that is still really important to us,” Taubensee said backstage of the spring-summer 2023 fashion show. “But it’s also important to remain true to what we did this for, which is expressing ourselves.” Enter American flag dress, made from faded flags that were stolen by DiCaprio’s friends from houses on Fire Island, its construction more ambitious than the one from their debut. A deconstructed wedding dress – safety-pinned at the bodice, spliced down the middle, and worn over pink stretch satin athleisure and denim cut-offs – once belonged to DiCaprio’s mom. They aren’t likely to put these pieces into production, but they are representative of the Vaquera spirit, which is irreverently anti-establishment. That irreverence came across in metallic “polo” shirts stitched with a lassoing cowboy instead of a mallet wielding polo player. Meanwhile, the acid wash denim’s faint yellow cast came from what Taubensee described as soy stain; “we actually use soy sauce,” she explained.