Post by Admin on Sept 16, 2016 18:23:03 GMT -4
In early September, summer turns to fall and fashion turns to New York Fashion Week, the first leg in the monthlong international relay in which next spring’s collections (or sometimes this fall’s collections) are shown.
New York’s week is particularly crammed, and while I raced uptown and down, subsisting on what I could cadge from catered shows and parties — a blini-and-caviar here (Ralph Lauren), a frosted mini doughnut there (Gucci), a cherry Coke Slurpee sucked down after dark (Alexander Wang) — I filled the margins of my notebook with the obscure, unexpected and pleasantly surprising. Here are some of the most memorable things I saw.
They Walk the Walk
Rachel Comey staged her 15th-anniversary runway show the way she staged her first: outside, on the sidewalk. It makes a certain amount of sense to show clothes this way. In a perfect world, a designer’s show would eventually end up out here, in the real world.
But when the shows get into the real world, the real world gets into the shows, too. A pedestrian happened onto, and then into, Ms. Comey’s show, eventually walking the length of the runway with the models, as the guests — Parker Posey and Rashida Jones among them — looked on. He looked first confused, then embarrassed, then, ultimately, proud of his fashion moment. As he passed the photographers’ pit at the end, he turned back to the crowd and waved.
Ms. Comey wasn’t the only person to show outside. In fact, it was something of a trend. Rebecca Minkoff took over a street in SoHo; later in the week Ralph Lauren commandeered Madison Avenue outside his women’s store; and Eckhaus Latta, whose shows both star and draw a crowd like a punk Art Students League, took over part of Seward Park on the Lower East Side, just across the street from its studio.
The collection has become more polished over the seasons. There is still plenty that looks homespun and handmade, in the most twisted way possible — when I visited the studio, Zoe Latta was showing off mud-colored sweatshirts she had hand-dyed in her Los Angeles backyard — but also smart and serious. I liked the muzzy knits, which seemed to drool their sleeves and edges, and the zippy (and zippered) denim pieces.
Thom Browne made a mosaic of a Slim Aarons pool scene, a fleet of Esther Williams-style bathing beauties in tricolor-striped cashmere swimsuits, and a patrol of birdmen to watch over them. It was a typical Browne spectacle, if there is such a thing: at once a kooky circus performance, a genuine fashion happening and, this time, a meditation on flatness — a timely one, in our age of screens. But my favorite part was the human disco ball who spun to light the proceedings, wearing a Browne gown and a faceted mirrored hat by Stephen Jones in the likeness of Mr. Browne’s dachshund and enduring inspiration, Hector.
Rufus Does Judy Does Michael Kors
Ten a.m. was the jazziest hour when Rufus Wainwright, backed by a band, did his best Judy Garland, belting out “Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart” and “Come Rain or Come Shine” at Michael Kors’s spring show. That’s a sensory assault that even American Songbook skeptics couldn’t resist. The models smiled. Serious fashion toes that had not tapped in years were seen to tap.
If Michael Kors was jazz, Brandon Maxwell was disco. Mr. Maxwell has had a turbocharged year: Since debuting his first collection last September, he has collected the Swarovski Award for emerging designers, been a finalist for the LVMH Prize and dressed the first lady.
But amid the heavy finery of the Russian Tea Room, where he staged hisshow, he stayed loose. His models, unlike most whose walks are stiff stomps, were instructed — by Mr. Maxwell and Stephen Galloway, who served as backstage boogie consultant — to pose, strut and shimmy down the runway. They’re not all born for the dance floor (there’s not a Pat Cleveland born every minute), but Riley Montana, who led the final procession with liquid grace, has the moves of a star.
Danger: Falling Models
Of course, grace is not a universal gift. Every so often, with shoes like these, and shows like these, a model will fall. And so they did. One poor soul nearly crumpled on Kanye West’s Yeezy runway, and Bruce Pask, the Bergdorf Goodman men’s fashion director, briefly became a folk hero when he gallantly stepped up to lend an arm. Later in the week, Bella Hadid, one of the season’s most in-demand models, took a tumble at Michael Kors. These things happen; the show goes on. In sympathy or coincidence, a fellow showgoer and I went flying, tangled together, toward the sidewalk outside Gucci’s party that night.
Worth the Price of Admission
I enjoyed the trashy confidence of the Hood by Air collection. But I enjoyed just as much seeing a Hood by Air fan, topless in leather chaps, bound over to the front row and chat up Naomi Campbell just before the show.
Rosie Assoulin has settled comfortably into her exuberant groove. Her signatures are bold colors and big volumes, a maximalist approach to event dressing. It can overwhelm. So it was a happy surprise to find her reining it in a bit this season, showing a few looks in basic black, linen and khaki, and several dresses simpler and smaller in circumference than in seasons gone by.
There was still plenty of cheer to go around. She had been thinking of family trips to the beach, she said, where she had also laid her scene. She paired a striped camp shirt with clashing striped trousers to happy, beach-chair effect. (There was a small mountain of beach chairs in lieu of a full set.) And for those who must have prismatic brightness, there were rainbow separates and a floor-length embroidered gown in the colors of the summer sun. “We call that one the Aperol Spritz,” Ms. Assoulin said.
Source from online.
