TODAY IN HISTORY
Vice president’s stepdaughter makes waves at event devoid of big designers
OnMarch 6, 1475, Italian artist and poet Michelangelo was born in Caprese in the Republic of Florence.
In 1836, the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas, fell as Mexican forces stormed
the fortress after a 13-day siege.
In 1853, Verdi’s opera “La Traviata” premiered in Venice, Italy.
In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Dred Scott v. Sandford, ruled 7-2 that Scott, a slave, was not an American citizen and therefore could not sue for his freedom in federal court.
In 1944, U.S. heavy bombers staged the first full-scale American raid on Berlin during World War II.
In 2002, Independent Counsel Robert Ray reported that former President Bill Clinton could have been indicted and probably would have been convicted in the scandal involving former White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
How we choose all of the stuff that we surround ourselves with is based on our needs — and wants — but also on how well those things are designed to help make our lives better. As Nike puts it, “Good innovation turns the complex into the simple,” and that’s just what the brand has done with the GO FlyEase sneaker, its first totally hands-free shoe.
The GO FlyEase design is based on a bi-stable hinge that holds the shoe in a steady, open position. Pop your foot in and step down on the “diving board” to lock the shoe into position. To take the shoe off, use your opposite foot to step on the “kickstand” heel, and the shoe hinges open. A giant rubber band keeps tension on the shoe in both the open and closed position, helping to keep it stable when you step in or out.
GO FlyEase is a perfect example of how something so simple can be so revolutionary, with applications that solve problems for a mass audience, from slipping on your kicks in an instant when you’re in a rush to helping when it’s physically challenging to bend over or use your hands to tie shoelaces.
In a statement on the brand’s site, Paralympian champion fencer Bebe Vio said, “Usually I spend so much time to get in my shoes. With the Nike GO FlyEase, I just need to put my feet in and jump on it. The shoes are a new kind of technology, not only for adaptive athletes but for everyone’s real life.” $120, nike.com.
A burning leaf that makes your house smell great
Scents have the ability to evoke memories, from summer’s freshly mowed grass to a crackling, winter fire. And the right scent can not only make your home smell great but also make you feel good too.
Now that you’ve been living in quarantine with your spouse, kids and pets for the last year, your stress levels are most likely at an all-time high and your sanctuary might be smelling, well, less-than-pleasant.
Sure, you can crack open a window, but it is the middle of winter after all. Or you can leave it to 128-year-old
Japanese incense maker Kunjudo to fill your space with the scent of better days and a feeling of calm. Set fire to one of the brand’s beautiful HAKOpaper incense leaves to deodorize a room and calm your mind.
The six different leaves have natural scents like green grass, agarwood, and citrus, all packaged in a wooden box that includes a ceramic burning dish. $82, imogeneandwillie.com, or as single leaves for $6 at shop.cooperhewitt.org
A laptop stand that’s totally sexy
If you never thought that a laptop stand could be anything more than, well, a laptop stand, think again. Swiss design firm Sillber has reimagined the clunky, utilitarian lift into a sleek work of art that will give your home office an instant style boost. The carved walnut Yohann MacBook Stand is part of the brand’s line of products created to make the everyday exceptional.
Sure, there are tons of other stands that enable you to position the top edge of your laptop screen level with your eyes, but none do it in such an elegant way. Yohann’s minimalist design artfully elevates your MacBook, giving it a floating, sculptural effect that makes you appreciate this office necessity for its form as well as function.
To finance its first production, the project was on Kickstarter and became the most successful crowdfunding story in its category said designer
Berend Frenzel in a statement on the brand’s website.
MacBook and MacBook Pro
Stand in Walnut, $179, and oak, $159, yohann.com.
Across
1 Arrest
5 Dwarf planet named for a goddess
9 Places to relax 14 Prefix meaning
“personal” 15 Caribbean isle seriously damaged by a 1995 volcanic eruption 17 Threshold
adjoiner
18 Law enforcement tool that may be triggered by a siren
19 Natural healer 20 First-class freebie on longhaul flights 21 1959 winner of 11 Oscars
23 Alfred of coffee
fame 24 Mollycoddle 26 Jocular headlock accompaniment
31 Yani _ _, youngest golfer to win five majors 33 Trendy 35 Head
makeup 36 Loose
38 Some holy city dwellers
40 They go
with guys 41 Ithaca
opening 43 Pirogue, e.g. 44 Campaign
buy 46 Reply card,
say 48 Viral internet item 50 NFL highlight reel clip 53 Barista’s
concoction 58 Get in the game 59 Reference for budding meteorologists 60 Acid _ _
61 Sara Pennypacker kid-lit heroine 62 Capone
capturers 63 Evening stroll 64 Stone massage
sites
65 Class with poses
Down
1 Muslim veil 2 Allan-_ _: Robin Hood cohort 3 Citrus liqueur 4 “Truth is ... ” 5 Imprisons 6 Leeway 7 Thorough 8 Composer Jule 9 Reach ahead of 10 Private
employer 11 Wisconsinbased bike brand 12 Spydom
name 13 Actuarial datum, e.g.
16 Rocket _ _ 22 Bob Jones
Award org. 25 Parrot
27 Prime spot for
stargazing? 28 Cuban city with a U.S. Navy base 29 SSN, e.g.
30 To be, in Latin 31 Harbor sights 32 Flip out 34 Mononymous
supermodel 37 Jazz group
guy
39 In the loop 42 Accessory
with a suit 45 Artist Modigliani 47 Equilibria
49 Big name in apple products
51 “The Girl Who Played With Fire” author
Larsson 52 Medicinal
shrub 53 Cosmonaut’s
insignia, once 54 Spaghetti _ _
puttanesca 55 Krystle and Alexis on the 1980s “Dynasty,” e.g.
56 Stew
57 Maui’s famously twisty Road to _ _
3/6/21
NEWYORK— Lulled by the cadence of four days of New York Fashion Week experienced through the computer, it was easy to miss the curly-haired, bespectacled model in the slouchy black trouser suit strolling by the Parrish Art Museum in the Hamptons, just one of the elegant, arty denizens of Proenza Schouler’s fall 2021 collection video.
But wait. Stifle that yawn. Squint, and squint again. Not just at the jacket closed by a single white button at the breastbone and cleverly structured to suggest, in its line and twisty attitude, the whiff of a cutaway; not just at the butter-soft tough leather coat she wears moments later; but at the woman herself. Is it … maybe … yes …
Ella Emhoff, the 21-yearold stepdaughter of Vice President Kamala Harris, knitwear designer and newly minted model, making her debut appearance in a show less than a month after she first came to the attention of the world at the inauguration of President Joe Biden.
Suddenly the shows, which had been feeling increasingly shrunken in the confines of the small screen, popped back into focus.
Was it a gimmick to capture attention in a discombobulated world? Maybe, a little. (It worked.) But it also served as a reminder of what fashion week is supposed to be about.
And that is? “This new moment in American history,” Lazaro Hernandez, co-designer and co-founder of Proenza Schouler, said via Zoom the day before the video was revealed. “A return to intelligence and values. And that was also what we wanted to show with this collection. That …”
“That,” his partner Jack McCollough chimed in, “we are on the precipice of a new era.”
The liminal collections
Welcome to New York Fashion Week, the transition. Most of the big names, the household ones that draw foreign editors and retailers to the city, were absent. Even most of the smaller breakout names were gone, all of them showing on unofficial dates so spread out that “New York Fashion Week” got repositioned as merely one part of “the American Collections,” a free-floating concept that exists yearround.
It would have been easy, even tempting, to dismiss the whole digital exercise as a dying allegiance to an old way of doing things. But among those who stuck it out and seized the day(s), there were glimmers of something: defiance, optimism, faith in the future. As a result, a better name for the event might have been one suggested by Hernandez: “the liminal collections.”
The ones created to bridge the space between the working-from-home isolated reality that was, and the world that will be.
See, for example, Proenza Schouler’s terrific bar-raiser of a collection, which combined tactile details — macramé and crochet inserts, silk fringe, dip-dyed hems, sheepskin slippers — with deliberately torqued tailoring in jersey, wool and leather. There was also easy layering, so that everything was sort of off-center and unexpected. What appeared to be layers of slip dresses and wrap skirts were in
fact a single garment; jackets could be cinched or uncinched in the back to pull the sides hither and yon; and the effect was both cocooning and peekaboo, like a body emerging from a chrysalis into the open air.
Everyone loves NewYork
Prabal Gurung captured the mood when he asked his models — men and women dancing around in a polka-dot floral explosion of red, pink, black
and white, flared pants, flamenco skirts and other sartorial odes to parties past — what they liked about New York.
“I always feel like I’m walking in a movie when I’m in New York,” one said. “New York gives me hope,” said another. Also, “New York gives me energy.” It was, Gurung said, a love letter to the city and the spirit he believed would come back.
Speaking of hearts: Imitation of Christ featured
two in its video — giant, virtual, 3D human hearts, pulsing in time around models in designer Tara Subkoff’s funk ’n’ flapper collection of deco beaded streetwear, a reference to COVID-19 and what sustains us. At the end, they burst into bloom, and what was unsettling turned into a moment of grace. Which may be the happy ending we are all hoping for.
New York — the actual city — was something of a through line in a number of shows. Jason Wu set his easy-to-digest sportswear redux and silk shmattes amid the walls of a fantasy general store filled with real fruits and vegetables. (They were later donated to City Harvest, a New York-based food rescue organization.) Ulla Johnson sent her parade of crafty knits and earthtone dresses with statement sleeves through the marble-floor vastness of Lincoln Center’s public spaces. Rather than signifying emptiness, the effect was to suggest that some day, those rooms would be full again. And so here was something to wear.
For sheer exuberance, however, it was hard not to smile at Libertine’s neoclassical patchwork of dancing brocades, khaki emblazoned with poetry and shooting star suits, traced by lines of silver. Or Collina Strada’s animorphs: upcycled finery in the form of T-shirt dresses with huge panniers at the hips and various pastel print separates seguing into creatures only sometimes seen in nature. The point being, this is a season of metamorphosis. We might as well embrace it.
Christian Cowan summed up it all up in his short film featuring Bowen Yang and Chloe Fineman of “Saturday Night Live” playing versions of themselves crashing, sweatsuit-clad, into a high-camp party of feathered, studded and sequined fabulousity in the (otherwise empty) Pierre Hotel.
At the end of the skit, as the pair stumble out of the building, now dressed in sequined grape-toned pajamas (Yang) and a lilac crystal top, zip-up miniskirt and faux fur (Fineman), they run across a confused fan who is startled at their new look. Are they playing a part? she asks.
The answer, they huff, is simple: “This is who we are now.”