While the designers celebrate anniversaries and remixes, they also invent a balance between the present and the past. In New York Fashion Week, they are one of the best.
Time and place were the main talking points throughout the first few days of New York Fashion Week. Over a small number of designers have celebrated anniversaries this season. Phillip Lim also came back to the calendar after a four-year hiatus. Rio Uribe was back this season after missing one, marking the tenth anniversary of his subversive, boundary-breaking label Gypsy Sport.
The big one was American fashion’s current sweetheart Peter Do, whose debut stock as Creative Director of Helmut Lang was the most hoped of the season.
Did a balanced job for an introverted young designer tasked with the impossible of welcoming back such a particular moment of coolness. He has risen to fame honestly because he is such a skilled tailor, and his expert hand was what was most exciting here: sharply edged cut suiting and dressed minis both stood out. His new and old audiences are already buying in.
In many ways, these anniversaries, returns, and remixes have offered us all a chance to look back on some of the best times of American fashion. We know that nostalgia is a cash cow design concept in the form of reissued bags, shoes, and prints. But, Do seems to get on some level; you can’t re-arrange the old days of style. So, how does American fashion beat a new path forward?
After several seasons of slightly confused points of view or overindulgent retro clothes, and despite this season’s celebrations of yore, the New York designers are starting to figure that out. During their show, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler proved that they’ve hit a stride. With the invention of the new logo, their latest collection was equally grounded in their past and present, with exciting chic suiting, skirts, and high heels that fashion girls will be muzzle over come spring.
Hats off to Comey and Batsheva Hay for always being a Head here and thoughtfully improving how we view a woman’s wardrobe for job and life. The same reaches out for Hillary Taymour of Collina Strada, who once again proved that present, past, and future, good, worst, and ugly, can all exist together in fashion. During her show, as her romantically strange clothes came down the runway on models with fake smiles, she advised all that we could accept our mistakes in the past.
