10 hot stories, including Kaia has big Choos to fill and how Brad won over Jen’s friends

Fashion month kicks off with the city that knows how to put on a show, says Laura Antonia Jordan

THE STARTING pistol for New York Fashion Week sounded more like a whimper than a bang. Embarking on the autumn/winter 2020 shows last week, there was more talk about who wasn’t going to be there, than who was. It hardly made for an auspicious start. Gone from the schedule this season for various reasons: Ralph Lauren, Jeremy Scott, Pyer Moss, Deveaux and more. Even Tom Ford, the current chairman of the CFDA, was absent, decamped to LA to coincide with the Oscars. The city that never sleeps, it seemed, had hit the snooze button.

Certainly fashion is an industry in flux, wringing its hands over its very existence.

What do we want from our clothes? Do we actually need or, for that matter, want more of them? Is there even any point of fashion weeks at all? As Tibi’s Amy Smilovic, who this season swapped the show format for a presentation in her Soho store, put it, ‘I think since we’ve been talking so much about sustainability and reusing things, maybe something was making me a little nauseous about the idea of putting on a show and then, when you guys leave, watching everything’ – by which she meant the paraphernalia of the production rather than the clothes themselves – ‘just get destroyed, cut up and put in the trash.’

For the designers who did put on a show, flexing their conscious credentials was imperative. That came in an array of interpretations: from the shoes sourced via resale site The Realreal at Eckhaus Latta to the sustainable wool and plant dyeing at Sies Marjan, to pieces made from clothes purchased at Ghana’s Kantamanto secondhand market at DIY darling Hillary Taymour’s Collina Strada (‘We’re picking up our shit,’ it said in the show notes).

Gabriela Hearst has carved out a niche as a doyenne of conscious design, and this season her intimate Spring Street show space was filled with bales of shredded paper. ‘Repurpose with purpose’ was her mantra for the collection, which took in coats puzzled together from the remnants of antique Turkish rugs and crochet dresses hand-knitted by a cooperative of female artisans. Hearst’s triumph is that the message never trumps the medium. Regardless of the sustainable credentials, these are clothes that you really want to wear.

When people want to throw shade at New York Fashion Week, their go-to is often to dismiss it as ‘commercial’, bandied around as a dirty word in fashion. I would retort that ‘relevant’ or ‘wearable’ are simply another way of lensing that. And isn’t it an act of quiet resistance to produce clothes that women can actually integrate into their lives – and for more than one season, at that?

There were certainly plenty of those. Clothes rooted in reality are a New York specialty (a happy result, perhaps thanks to the sheer number of women designers on the schedule, women who know, for instance, that you might want sturdy boots over totter-inducing heels). So, on the wish list for next season: Ulla Johnson’s patchwork coat, Longchamp’s hautebourgeois culottes, Zadig & Voltaire’s sumptuous leather suiting, and Kate Spade’s egg-yolk crochet dress – another brand that eschewed a runway show for a presentation (references to the ’70s racked up throughout the week).

Designers who want to make clothes that sell would do well to look at Tory Burch, a woman who has built a billion-dollar empire on doing exactly that. Her ambitious collection was a step outside of classic Tory – but not a total departure from it: painted boots were layered over skinny pants, tunics worn with trousers and Edwardian jackets shrugged on over fluid dresses. An avid art collector, that might explain the more eclectic spirit afoot; her collection felt like the sartorial equivalent of displaying a pop art piece next to an Old Master. Indeed, Burch showed her collection in Sotheby’s,

among a series of monumental ceramic sculptures by the artist Francesca Dimattio. ‘She takes traditionally feminine materials like wedding dress beads and basketweaving, and creates giant, powerful structures,’ explained Tory. ‘I love how they represent feminine confidence.’

Despite the hesitant start to the week, there was buckets of confidence to be found. That’s what America’s mega-brands do so well, of course. Take Michael Kors, who is celebrating the 40th anniversary of his label next year. His A/W ’20 offering included generous capes, chunky knits layered one on top of the other, and sleek riding boots. It felt both easy, elegant, like the best luxe American sportswear, and totally right for now. At Coach, where Debbie Harry performed, Stuart Vevers took his cue from a different New York: that of the ’80s downtown scene, where he quipped ‘literally everyone was in a band’. Geometric knits, colourful leathers and oversized Crombies were grounded by socks and sneakers. Vevers collaborated with the Jean-michel Basquiat estate for the collection. The doodle-decorated accessories are sure to charm a generation that wasn’t even born in the ’80s, a pertinent reminder that the best art has the power to last, not just shock.

If let-loose joy was the takeaway from last season, this time it was about glamour, executed here with poise and conviction. It came in myriad forms, from the quiet luxury of The Row and Marina Moscone to the club-kid-grown-up peacocking of Area’s woven crystal pieces. Weird and wonderful and utterly bewitching, Rodarte was a welcome return to the schedule. The Mulleavy sisters took over Midtown’s St Bartholomew’s church with their gothic, nourish creations. Beanie Feldstein, Caitriona Balfe and Zazie Beetz all sat on the front row; I suspect their stylists have already bookmarked several of these looks for next awards season.

In a more classic interpretation of glamour, there was sweeping gala-dinner version peddled by Brandon Maxwell (where the Cheer stars on the FROW nearly stole the show), Prabal Gurung, Carolina Herrera and Oscar de la Renta. Oh, to be the woman who gets to wear the latter’s silk velvet gown with an explosive hem of ivory feathers.

Meanwhile, two of the hottest tickets of the week set about reclaiming sexiness, giving it an independent, cool-girl spin and ‘I want all of it’ urgency. Proenza Schouler had a stellar season. Its women swaggered with slicked-back hair, in jackets that peeled from the shoulders, leather boots that

snaked up the thigh and form-fitting dresses with slashed midriffs… all in all, spelling bad news for the prairie dress. Showing at 9am on Tuesday morning, Khaite’s Catherine Holstein, a designer who made her name with impeccably curated minimal luxe, presented a collection of zebra jacquards, thigh-high boots and backless dresses suspended by strings of diamanté. They appeared to have been up all night, albeit at a particularly chic party. Clothes that are ready to party and ready for reality – what could be more 2020 than that?

If there was one designer who captured the bombastic exuberance of own-the-room glamour, however, it was Christopher John Rogers. Winner of the CFDA/VOGUE Fashion Fund, the scrum outside Spring Studios was testament to how highly anticipated his show was. He didn’t disappoint. The collection took in lurid taffetas, zingy colours and bulbous silhouettes. It was loud, proud and brilliantly boisterous; an emerald gown, so epic in scale that it filled the runway, was a particular crowdpleaser. (Side note: off the catwalk,

US label Telfar’s Shopping Bag, dubbed the ‘Bushwick Birkin’ by its carriers, jostled for dominance in the popularity stakes with Bottega Veneta’s padded Cassette bag, a pertinent reminder that, given the right platform, these names-to-know can graduate to ones-to-wear).

What Rogers undoubtedly did was remind us about the power of a moment, and why fashion shows, when executed with originality and passion, still matter. He passed that baton to Marc Jacobs, who yet again proved to be a cheerworthy closing act for the week. A tribute to ‘a disappearing New York… foreign and exotic in its extinction, forever mythical and chic with its beauty, promise, sparkle and grit’, Jacobs’ show included troops of dancers choreographed by Karole Armitage. Pillbox hats and couture-inspired coats called to mind Jackie Kennedy; Bella Hadid’s sleeveless black dress and shoulder-length gloves felt like a 21st-century conjuring of Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast At Tiffany’s. This city is brilliant, he seemed to say, and so is its design talent. Indeed, it was so electric, so exciting, one hardly even noticed the surprise cameo from Miley Cyrus.

We are living in strange, unsettling times, times of immense change, but the show must – and will – go on.