Woman

The Batsheva Charm. Batsheva AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

“It’s big, broad, and for everything she might want to do,” says Batsheva Hay of her autumn-winter 2022 collection. Her blooming label is no longer just about timeless prairie dresses. Now she has pushed her aesthetic into housecoats, and sweatshirt skirts, and pajama sets, and quilted vests, and blouse and skirt sets, and tiny scalloped edge knits, and… well, you get it. Hay is putting her twist on almost every category, denim to debutante dresses. It might read as a commercially minded play, and, yes, more clothes means more opportunity to expand the business, but as Hay tells it, this season was really about taking all the her friends and customers have been giving her for years. “People always send me pictures of Sharon Tate’s wedding dress,” she says, “so finally I just made one.” Her take is denim with dusty rose velvet trim. For those who want body-con, there is a tight maxi dress covered in funny crochet granny squares. Simplicity seekers have asked for black: now Hay has her most streamlined, no ruffle black velvet dress with vintage ribbon trim. A gray cardigan with hand-crochet trim is a tip from Jenna Lyons, who advised Hay to just remake all her popular blouse shapes as knits. The many velvet coat-dresses, with prim bows and sweet little hoods, are Hay’s advice to herself: something cute and sweet for all weather. The glue that binds her diverse work together is her own sense of quirky weirdness. Of the grandma-style florals she says “you need something a little repulsive!” Not abandoning her weirdo sensibility while being able to expand into new realms is her great strength.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Industrial Sexy. Khaite AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

Here’s the picture of what’s fashion like this New York Fashion Week: it’s either an over-the-top fantasy (Area) or a pragmatic, down-to-earth look at the re-emergence wardrobe (Proenza Schouler). Khaite is rather in the latter camp, but not entirely. Launched in 2016 as a resource for classic essentials, the ethos of the brand hasn’t changed: it’s still constructed on a foundation of cashmere sweaters, leather, denim, and tailoring. But Cate Holstein shakes up that properness lately. Last season, she dimmed the lights almost to black; for autumn-winter 2022, she channeled the glam and grit of pre-Bloomberg New York, with Kurt Cobain wailing “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” on the soundtrack. Khaite is getting edgier than it was in its early days. “It’s our most New York show,” Holstein said, “the most industrial,” and she pointed out that the freight elevator from that scene in Fatal Attraction was down the block from the show venue. Holstein built this collection with the outerwear as a priority. It started with a zip-front leather jacket, with an exaggerated collar and full sleeves. Much more leather followed: an aviator, a trench, double-breasted blazers, snap-front work shirts, and a Perfecto like Emmanuelle Seigner’s in Frantic, a movie Holstein quoted backstage. Jackets and coats sorted, the Khaite customer will need a mini for autumn. Khaite’s are shapely— – igh waisted and neatly belted, with a zip all the way down the front. Should she require a dress, she might fancy an off-the-shoulder number traced in a harlequin of Swarovski crystals, a fully fringed cocktail number that took three weeks of work to complete, or the crocheted column studded with crystals that was the collection’s showpiece. As sexy as the vibe was, Holstein achieved it without the towering spike heels we’ve seen turning up elsewhere this week. The post-pandemic stiletto comeback isn’t anywhere in sight. Holstein gets that – another notch in her favor.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Poignant. Brandon Maxwell AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

I’ve never really followed Brandon Maxwell‘s work, but his autumn-winter 2022 collection seized my attention. This was Maxwell’s most personal show yet – it opened with Siri reading his Wikipedia page before cutting to a short film of spliced together family photos and video clips, many of Maxwell through the years with his grandmother, who is now suffering from Alzheimer’s. The Wikipedia page reminded us that Maxwell spent much of his youth in her Longview, Texas clothing boutique. He credits his grandmother with his passion for design. “She’s a big part of my life,” he said. “I was going back to when I was a kid: While she was cooking I’d be in the back room taking blankets and wrapping them around my sister, emptying out her jewelry box, and making my sister carry one of her bags. When we decided to do a show, I wanted to make something that if it was my last one it would be a bookend that I was proud of.” The blanket shawls, antique jewelry, and clutch bags Maxwell remembers were recurring motifs here, talismans from his youth. Fabrics felt chosen to conjure a feeling of home, too, from the crushed satin of a double lapel coat, to the oversize chenille stitch of a short belted sweater dress, to the rich brown interior textiles Maxwell used for tailoring. The flowers on Karlie Kloss’s finale dress were taken from a painting he asked his grandfather to make in his grandmother’s honor. The last couple of times Maxwell was on the runway, the mood he channeled was slicker, more glamorous. The softer, more romantic tenor of these clothes was “a way to dial into a shared frequency” between himself and his grandmother, he said. This was a poignant show, a thoughtful and heartfelt goodbye to the woman who set him on his path.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Confident & Refined. Victor Glemaud AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

Victor Glemaud‘s brilliant autumn-winter 2022 outing oozed with the energetic New York chic of the Halston days – and the graceful confidence of the Halstonettes. Lately, Glemaud has been working a more minimalist groove, and this season the designer ramped up that aesthetic, stripping down and paring back his signature vibrant knits. Models sauntered into the marble paved atrium in classic stilettos, their hair tied back with chic headscarves. The collection has its key reference – Ousmane Sembène’s Black Girl, a masterpiece of 1960s cinema that earned the pioneering Senegalese filmmaker international renown. Mbissine Thérèse Diop plays the young Senegalese woman who moves to France to work for a wealthy white family. Her stirring performance is amplified by a wardrobe of impeccable black and white shift dresses. Punctuated with touches of tangerine and soft beige, the collection’s mostly monochromatic palette nodded to Diop’s scene-stealing performance. Glemaud introduced a new, more pliant yarn to his brand this season, and the resulting cut and sew jersey dresses were attention grabbing and flattering on a variety of body types. The most compelling examples were cut with athletic attitude, including clingy hooded racerback maxi dresses, ruched asymmetric LBDs, and stirrup leggings. As a partner to those bodycon looks, Glemaud showed a series of fur coats, perhaps the most unexpected aspect of the collection. With so many brands going fur-free, these days it’s rare to see so much as a fur trim on the runway. Still, for Glemaud the choice made sense. “Fur has a rich history in Black culture and it’s something I don’t think we should be ashamed about,” he said backstage. “I also don’t believe we should live in fear of being canceled.” It was a lovely surprise to discover in the show notes that he had dedicated the collection to “the countless women who left their homelands for the American Dream,” including his elegantly dressed mother and her twin sister, originally from Haiti, who sat in the front row. “I wanted this collection to be a celebration of body and shape, but most of all a celebration of Black women,” said Glemaud. Easily the most powerful statement of the show was the casting of all Black dark-skinned beauties.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.

Tough Femininity. Elena Velez AW22

| Design & Culture by Ed

Elena Velez held her show at the Freehand Hotel, transforming its Georgia Room, typically a bar, into a bare-bones space, accompanied by a soundtrack that began with a woman repeating “She was a disgrace to all women.” It was a cheeky way to start off a presentation whose theme celebrated women and their different forms of femininity. As for Velez’s version of femininity, it’s tough and gritty. She’s from Milwaukee, the only child of a single mother who is a ship captain. Velez stresses that she has her own unorthodox perception of womanhood, which, through her creations, has turned out to be wildly confident, a bit aggressive, and very hot. Much of her success can be credited to her great handle on the “tough femininity” dichotomy in her designs. The Parsons graduate uses fabrics that are made to last and have a military-grade toughness. Some of these materials include army canvas, Lake Michigan ship sails (a nod to her mother), and parachutes. More often than not, Velez doesn’t cover the original serial numbers on the fabric but instead keeps them in the final design, another grit-factor addition. According to the designer, the use of these materials is to show tension within womanhood. While Velez stresses toughness in her design ethos, there is no clunk in the pieces. The silhouettes are sensual and curve skimming. Corsets were a theme in the collection, sometimes deconstructed with sliced-off sections. Peasant tops, once romantic and woo-woo, were incredibly alluring, cinched at the waist with a boning motif. Even the long and loose and flowy ivory dresses, which could have been the nightgown of every bedridden Victorian woman, had sex appeal thanks to the artful way a strap hung off the shoulder or how the boning traced the body. The final image of the collection has all the essense of Velez’ vision: a striking model closed the show while carrying a cherubic baby and wearing a black dress with a sharp oval cutout stretching from the sternum to below the navel. Truly a stunning version of femininity.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.