“It’s starting!” was the message on my WhatsApp as we anxiously sat in the van for over an hour Saturday evening, racing from the West Side Midtown to Brooklyn’s Brownsville section. From Brandon Maxwell’s colorful and chic show, accented with a southern hospitality of BBQ and beer to the Weeksville Heritage Center, where Kerby Jean-Raymond showed his Pyer Moss collection in the courtyard of the historic house purchased by free black settlement since 1838.
“It’s inexcusable!” screamed one of the passengers. I was going to text ahead and have the models remain in their show looks so we could go backstage when we arrived. The driver then informed us we were less than five minutes away. I was on a desperate quest to find the voices that speak for what is American fashion in New York.
We made it backstage as the models were ready for their finale. From a monitor on the wall, we saw a 40-person choir performing outside. A white, mock-neck, satin silk dress with giant cocoon sleeves; a pink, boxy tuxedo with loose pants; and a white tee with a graphic of a man and child barbecuing by the artist Derrick Adams were among the clothes on the array of mix-gendered models waiting to exit onto the walkway. As they walked, the choir stood partially in the rain. We exited after the designer and hid behind the bush to hear the clear and piercing voices singing in the quiet night.
“I wanted to show what African-American leisure life looked like,” Jean-Raymond said as he pointed out the shirt printed with a backyard barbecue. The designer said these are the clothes that he would see his aunts, uncles, and friends wear, but he wanted to make them for today’s youth. Thus a more relaxed look; a looser silhouette in bright colors and a lighter hand in design, especially for women’s styles. Today, fashion is rarely imbued with meaning and narrative that says something about the designer, as well as the customers who embrace the brand. For a young brand like Pyer Moss, now in its fifth year, telling a story is critical to foster a community around the products.
In terms of narrative, Raf Simons provided plenty for his Calvin Klein show about the lives of youth in between the sea, sun, sex, love, and danger, using two blockbuster movies “The Graduate” and “Jaws,” set to the implausible lyrics of Simon Garfunkel’s “Scarborough Fair.” The walls were projected with a nude girl running into the ocean. The famed Jaw's theme song grew louder, and models with wet hair emerged, wearing black neoprene scuba jumpsuits with beige, pleated skirts torn on one side or neoprene pants with inside-out animal print apron flaps paired with tie-dyed tanks. Followed by sleeveless shift dresses made to look like dried flowers, pressed and ironed. Men in oversized blazers, colorful tuxedo jackets; black graduation caps and black academic dress, now transformed into black, lapel-less light coats.
Since his first show at Calvin Klein, Simons has consistently asked What is America, and had made suggested answers through the iconographic pop art (Andy Warhol), movie culture (popcorn), the archetypes of the Mid and Far West prairie dresses, and Looney Tunes characters dotting oversized sweaters worn with firemen coats. Simons excelled at providing a context for clothes, and here he mixed emotion with pop-cultural landmarks such as movie blockbusters, merging the superficial and the profound.
The collective Vaquera – Patric DiCaprio, Bryn Taubensee, and Claire Sully – showed at a grade school in the Lower East Side with one model wearing a blue graduation outfit over a white crinoline dress, carrying his own portrait in a frame. But Vaquera is universes away from the world of Calvin Klein. Here, they played with the familiar iconography of the typical high school archetypes: jocks, cheerleaders, nerds. Mean girls in large print tee-dresses, ball-gowns, shrunken jackets, and short dresses with fuchsia-colored capes. In the show, boys and girls wear unisex clothes indiscriminately. A boy in a silver sleeve blouse and colorful print layered shorts with fuchsia kneepads did not seem odd.
To fully understand and embrace what’s different, clothes, at times, need context. Consider Martin Margiela’s Spring and Fall 2000 XXL collections featuring garments sized 74 and 78 or Rei Kawakubo’s 2 dimensions Fall 2012: the garments looked odd because we were not familiar to seeing them, nor seeing how different people wore them. Sometimes, all it takes is an adjustment to the eye. Take Rio Uribe’s sustainable Gypsy Sport show at the Samsung 837 in the Meatpacking District. Uribe utilized recycled fabrics to make new garments decorated with pressed flowers, sea shells, and even pieces of woods strewn onto hybrid deconstruction and reconstruction that resulted in shapes ranging from skirts with built-in underwear, shredded jeans, waistband dresses, and denim sleeveless print dresses. An extremely diverse cast added to the drama of the show, narrated by an Earth healer. One of the standout looks was a cropped denim shirt with ruffled midriff, worn with stretch denim low-slung leggings.
Proenza Schouler returned to New York after a year sojourn in Paris. Their clothes are now made with cotton and denim fabrics to reflect a greater emphasis of sportswear, rather than complicated ‘art’ clothes as in past years. This time, four small sculptures of small-scale looks from the show were installed at the entrance by the Berlin artist, Isa Genzken. The A-line and wide-leg dominant silhouettes, high-collar jackets with flared pants, bleached denim sundresses, or variety of high waist trousers matched with simple shirts or tunics are part of this collection that will insurmountably reset business for the brand come next spring.
Rodarte did a fantastic show in the rain at a cemetery in the East Village where the sound of the models’ heels striking the steel plates set on wet green grass harmonized with the noise of the rain striking the walkway. True to their spirit and committed to making special clothes, Kate and Laura Mulleavy’s exquisitely crafted collection – a red leather ruffle dress with a cape; an aqua tulle and lace dress with bow straps; or a pale pink chiffon layered dress with large tulle sleeves – stood out against the somber mood of the cemetery, and against the commercial sportswear dominance of American fashion.
There’s a sense of nostalgia toward a recent time when fashion seemed less of a fast-moving swipe. That was the sense from the Matthew Adams Dolan show of manipulated basic sportswear items like wide leg denim jeans and oversize denim shirts that can be worn separately as a jacket or together as a of a suit. Dolan has undertaken this work since his first runway show for Spring 2015 in the basement of an art gallery. There, he showed extravagant denim jackets, coats, and pants reworked with shredding and fringe.
The giant sculpture of a dinosaur skeleton assembled from steel inside Pier 54 did not detract attention from Coach’s successful mining of the American heritage, now an entity that owns multiple brands. The collection Stuart Vevers showed did not stray far from his first runway show for the Coach 1941 collection in September 2015. “Prairie cool” was the highlight. This time, the inspiration was New Mexico, bringing a range of desert sand colors on print long dresses, denim shirt-dresses, ruffled baby doll dresses, and leather jackets and coats – the heart of the brand. Not much of an evolution though there is the more commercial collaboration with Disney that is prevalent on several sweatshirts.
On the contrary, the terrace of Spring Studios in Tribeca,, Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia wipe clean the Oscar de la Renta heritage and the more rigid method of dressing; heavy and over-decorated evening gowns and daywear clothes pepper their work, with the purpose of making the collection more appealing to millennials. A white, one-sleeve blouse worn with a print fringed sarong; a colorful print long dress slit at the front; or a golden strapless printed with a train demonstrated how Kim and Garcia have now molded the brand using their perspective.
With the band FAKA doling out tunes in the rain, Telfar Clemens took basic wardrobe pieces like tee-shirts, denim, and polos, and transformed them with his own twist into more unfamiliar silhouettes, dedicating the collection to America: ‘nice landscape, good arable land, and plenty of shelter to go around.’ A polo with a spread collar; a deep V-neck sweatshirt; and a series of altered denims mixed with graphic prints were among the standouts, only if seen through the chain fence.
A performance of a different kind took place at the Eckhaus Latta show in an industrial building in Brooklyn where a group of kids gathered around to beat drumsticks on paint containers and other housewares. Young girls screamed over the drumbeats. Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta’s fluid collection excelled in construction techniques when breaking through the loud noises, particularly in the knitwear range with a white hand-knit dress with front slit or mohair sweater with brown tie-dyed jeans. There were also several standout tailored tight and loose jackets, drawstring waists, single-breasted pantsuits.
As in past seasons, New York’s Spring 2019 show started and ended with Tom Ford and Marc Jacobs, two seasoned designers both offering the same uncompromising view of what American fashion should be inside the Park Avenue Armory. Neither Tom Ford nor Marc Jacobs subscribed or succumbed to the notion of the recent invasion of casualization into high fashion – both designers anchored their clothes for women who wanted to get dressed up, not down.
Ford focused on creating a seductive wardrobe of lean silhouettes for his clientele, with long pencil crepe de chine and chiffon skirts worn with a hard leather or leopard-print pony coats. Real clothes, like sharp jackets and coats worn over skinny knee-length skirts, were Ford’s runway motto and a return to what the designer was best known for since the mid 1990s. But this time the disco ball was nowhere to be seen or heard. Instead, a sexy sophistication reigned supreme.
Jacobs seduced with a magical and fantastic collection where he refined his giant trapeze silhouettes from fall and made the giant taffeta multi-layered neckline and puff sleeves look at ease. The designer did not compromise his sense of high fashion, offering a range of clothes from a simple yellow silk slip dress to large jacket and multi-pleated pants, pink and orange chiffon ruffle slip dress, and a bright orange taffeta strapless shirt dress with folded floral patterns. It certainly gave New York fashion week a great uplift with the kind of glorious couture. But fantasy can also be realistic as is the case of a beige cashmere elbow sleeve undershirt paired with an organza tiered ruffle skirt belted by a brown velvet – one of the show’s great but unnoticed look.
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