Tom Ford stood on an abandoned subway platform under a sign that read “EXIT Delancey St & Bowery”. The grime was evident: the subway tiles seemed like they hadn’t been cleaned in decades. Ford’s models, who used the platform as a runway, wore choppy faux hawks and silk-jersey T-shirts with the sleeves rolled roughly up over the shoulder atop debutante floor-length skirts—punk ghosts from an era when the Lower East Side was derelict. Was this glitzy Ford’s ode to gritty New York?
“Yes, that was the point!” Ford said as he greeted guests after his show. He leaned in for a bisous-bisous. “I’m kissing everybody,” he added.
Ford is the new chairman of the Council of Fashion Designers of America, and his setting was indicative of the entire week of New York shows, which took place from September 6-11. Designers drilled into the experience of being American, with settings from Harlem to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, often relying on live music and theatrical performances to help them set the stage. Yes, there were clothes—the kind that people will likely want to wear in their real lives, fantasies be damned.
It’s no secret that New York Fashion Week has languished in recent years, but this season marked an ideological shift: the clothes became the backdrop for the show—and the show carried a deeper message about what each designer stands for. It was reminiscent of the golden period of American fashion design, when New York’s then-leading designers— Donna Karan, Ralph Lauren, Calvin Klein, Halston, Bill Blass—wrought collections from their own life and experiences.
Marc Jacobs reflected on his 2001 show that took place on the eve of 9/11 and the loss of his friend David River. “It has been 18 years and a day we will never forget,” he wrote in his show notes. “This show, like that show, is a celebration of life, joy, equality, individuality, optimism, happiness, indulgence, dreams, and a future unwritten as we continue to learn from our past.”
So this wasn’t a fashion week about inventing a new silhouette. Designers delved into their messages: opposing cultural biases, the experience of being black in America, celebrating curvy bodies and every age of womanhood. There was even a wheelchair section at Tommy Hilfiger’s joyous ode to 1970s Harlem, created in collaboration with the actress Zendaya.
This season, while people in the front rows and backstage discussed trade tariffs, Brexit and the latest news in Washington, D.C., models twirled and smiled on a remarkable number of runways, including Ralph Lauren, Brandon Maxwell, Sies Marjan and Deveaux. It marked a departure from the stone-faced marches that have been the official walk for a couple of decades. Whatever follows in London, Milan and Paris, New York designers embraced a very American can-do approach that suggested that fashion doesn’t—and shouldn’t—exist outside of politics, culture and the economy.
After showing his collection on Friday, CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund award winner Telfar Clemens invited guests to a preview of Slave Play, a Broadway play billed as exploring the experiences of three couples navigating race, history, gender and sexuality.
At Pyer Moss in his native Flatbush, Brooklyn, Kerby Jean-Raymond used a choir called The Pyer Moss Tabernacle Drip Choir Drenched in The Blood on stage at the spectacularly renovated Kings Theatre. The show was the final installment in a three-part series entitled “American, Also” in which Jean-Raymond has explored black people’s often-forgotten contributions to popular culture. He focused this season on Sister Rosetta Tharpe, a ’40s-era recording artist whose rhythmic gospel music was a precursor to rock ’n’ roll. Among the memorable looks—which included a Reebok athletic capsule collection—were a series of printed fabrics using artwork by Richard Phillips, the artist who was exonerated in 2017 after 45 years in prison.
Meanwhile, international politics were playing out: brands that buy fabric from China or produce collections there are being forced to seek alternatives. The lack of clarity over whether tariffs will shoot as high as 20% added a worrying level of uncertainty.
The Row doesn’t face such challenges, and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen ’s brand stayed in its monastic lane. They recognized early on the public’s desire for calming and comfortable collections in deeply luxurious fabrics that are nearly impossible to identify by season.
Gabriela Hearst served lunch and promised that her show would be carbon neutral—once she purchased the appropriate number of offsets. While her guests waited for the actress Diane Lane to arrive (Lane whispered to her seat partner that her car had been stuck in traffic on the FDR expressway), they checked their phones to read that President Donald Trump had fired National Security Adviser John Bolton—or perhaps Bolton had resigned first.
At Carolina Herrera, Wes Gordon’s take on Americana was inspired by California’s super-bloom this spring. “I’ve spent the past year and a half trying to make joyful, happy dresses,” he said after his show in Battery Park.
One could almost smell Texas in Brandon Maxwell’s collection, in which the Texas-born designer introduced two surprises—a whole lot of denim and his first menswear collection. Maxwell sneaked out back for a surreptitious cigarette after the show, which he held in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and said he’d drawn more deeply from his personal world this season. “I live in Brooklyn, and my fiancee is wearing one of my jackets tonight.” With a much broader collection of daywear in addition to the former stylist’s evening looks, Maxwell seemed to be stepping up to a larger-scale brand. “You decide if that’s the case,” Maxwell said. Then he paused. “Yeah, why not?” he said. “I’m comfortable. Why not?”
Ralph Lauren staged an over-the-top nightclub extravaganza that harked back to the glory days of the Stork Club. His primary colored-evening jackets and bugle-beaded overcoats were available immediately afterwards, so any presidential saber-rattling will not upset their price points.
Though he wasn’t quite the last designer to show this week, Michael Kors seemed to be trying to sum the mood up - upliftingly - with a preppy collection that leaned heavily on red, white and blue as the Young People’s Chorus of New York City belted out a medleys of songs — “American Pie”, Simon and Garfunkle’s “America” — that left little doubt that Kors thinks America is already great.
But the ultimate example of where this is all going took place at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn when Rihanna filmed an Amazon Prime television special for her Savage X Fenty lingerie line. It featured performers, including Halsey, Migos, and Tierra Whack, with celebrity cameos - Cara Delavingne! Laverne Cox! - that will stream on Amazon on Sept. 20. (Audience members were asked to check their phones to prevent any sneak peaks slipping out on social media.) Backstage, dozens of actors and rappers were corralled and run through a corridor where they were filmed. Diplo waved his hands back and forth across his body and mugged for the camera. Chris Rock wandered around in sunglasses looking perplexed. An MC encouraged fashion-industry guests to “dance and sing with the cast throughout the show. Bring that energy!”
As several dozen underwear-clad dancers of every imaginable skin color and shape, including several amputees, gyrated onstage, it was easy to imagine Victoria’s Secret executives taking notes about how to message inclusivity and diversity. It may not have been fashion but the crowd left feeling like it is the future.
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