The clothes provided all the star power necessary
NEW YORK — New York Fashion Week was missing some of its star power this season. With the abrupt departure of its designer Raf Simons, Calvin Klein was a no-show. L.A.-based Rodarte opted for a hometown stand instead. Tommy Hilfiger announced plans to stage his next globe-trotting fashion extravaganza in Paris (where fellow Big Apple catwalk expats Thom Browne and Altuzarra have been presenting their collections for the last several seasons), while another familiar face — Victoria Beckham — was showing in London for a second season. And, yet, there were still enough memorable moments to remind us all why New York remains a critical stop on the twice-yearly fashion-week circuit. Here are a few of them.
Tom Ford
“What I wanted was an ease,” Tom Ford said backstage after his Feb. 6 show. “I think clothing right now should be nonaggressive. And that sounds strange coming from me because I’ve often done somewhat aggressive, hard clothes.”
The softer color palette that was such a noticeable switch-up in his spring and summer 2019 collection — plums, caramels, pale blues, dove grays and sugary pinks (hues influenced by his permanent move to Los Angeles a few years back, he says) — is back again for fall. This time it’s in a collection that ranged from strong-shouldered tailored velvet jackets to easy-wearing dresses and luxe hoodies. Many of the women’s looks were accessorized with large faux-fur fedoras.
That “ease” was also seen in a range of pale-colored silk jersey dresses anchored with chain-link hardware electroplated in the same pale shades of pink and lilac as the dresses.
Ralph Lauren
Ralph Lauren is one of the very few labels that presents a see-now, buy-now collection during New York Fashion Week. The spring and summer 2019 women’s collection presented at the Ralph Lauren Madison Avenue flagship was heavy on black and white; with silhouettes heavy on the exaggerated wide-legged trouser on the bottom and sharp tailoring north of the chunky statement belt.
Other standouts included a wide-legged silk jumpsuit inspired by an archival ’80s design that, had it hit retail just a few days earlier, would have been a viable power suit option for this year’s State of the Union address and the symbolic wearing of suffragette white; a black-and-gold-striped sequined sweater dress that was as clingy and form-fitting as it was sparkly; and a knee-length metallic gold lambskin trench coat with a contrast notch-lapel wool collar.
Brandon Maxwell
The setting and tone for Brandon Maxwell’s fall and winter 2019 runway show could hardly have been more different from last season’s Texas tailgate party.
In his show notes, Maxwell explained that while last season’s collection was about where he came from (he grew up in Texas), “this season,” he wrote, “is firmly rooted in the idea of resolving where I am.” Where Maxwell is has a lot to do with his mother, who was diagnosed with breast cancer between that season and the present one. In that time, he said, “I found myself thinking about the potential of clothes to act like armor against the elements both physical and spiritual.”
Maxwell’s “armor” has nothing to do with metallic breastplates and everything to do with instilling a sense of inner resilience through a back-to-basics color palette ground in black and white (with a very few pops of pink, green and blue) and silhouettes that were sharp, chic and elegant but with an air of insulation and protection.
When it came time to take his finale bow, Maxwell urged his mother, who had been sitting in the front row, to join him. They walked arm-in-arm to the end of the runway, flanked by a thunderous standing ovation.
Christian Siriano
Christian Siriano’s latest collection “was inspired by a trip to the future,” the designer said in the notes accompanying the show, “a world where we live as a society in an outer space land; a new culture f loating in space with communities and a thriving social calendar.”
Siriano’s vision of a futuristic outer space utopia came down to Earth as a collection grounded in a palette of silvers (shades dubbed supernova silver, meteor silver and interstellar silver in the run of show, to be specific), grays (astral gray and galactic gray, specifically) and blacks (eclipse, midnight and infinite) with a few bursts of color coming by way of pulsar purple.
Stiffer-than-usual mesh fabrications added a size and shape to a collection that was noticeably pumped up on volume thanks to full-length faux-fur coats, oversized evening gowns and acres of silver metallic quilting that made its way into cropped puffer jackets, button-front A-line skirts and a one-button, notch-lapel blazer and flare-legged trouser ensemble so sharp and futuristic it wouldn’t have been out of place in “The Matrix.”
Tory Burch
For her fall and winter 2019 collection, Tory Burch found inspiration in Black Mountain College, an experimental and influential college that opened in rural North Carolina in 1933, shuttered in 1957 and counted among its faculty and students Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly, Buckminster Fuller, Merce Cunningham and John Cage.
The former art history major — who often turns to the field for inspiration (her pre-fall collection was inspired by Georgia O’Keeffe) — said the inspirational starting point was less about the specific artists affiliated with the school and more about their interaction and collaboration. “That’s [the reason behind] the manipulation of fabrics,” Burch explained, “the knife pleats and the ruffles but then also a little bit of a sportier vibe.”
The result was a collection heavy on the mixing and matching and slicing and dicing of Tory Burch classics; florals, bold stripes and paisleys cavorted in the same garment or layered one over another. Herringbones and checks lived peacefully side by side. Solid, structured coats with chunky metal hardware and crisp blazers played off billowy, wide-legged trousers.
Michael Kors
This season, Michael Kors took his audience back to the ’70s.
The result was a collection that served up some of the familiar disco-era clichés; purple sequin halter dresses, ruched gold metallic jersey dresses and minidresses shimmering with copper fringe. Animal prints prowled the runway in the form of tiger-striped sequin pants, metallic jacquard dinner jackets, a python print shirt and boots.
For anyone unclear about the inspirational starting point, Kors hammered it home with a range of pieces emblazoned with the logo of the Studio 54 nightclub, including sleeveless glitter cashmere intarsia T-shirts and sweatshirts, embroidered motorcycle jackets, crepe de chine blouses, poplin shirts and duffel bags.
Marc Jacobs
On the eve of Valentine’s Day, designer and master showman Marc Jacobs closed New York Fashion Week with a show that conjured up a palpable sense of loneliness — and wistfulness and melancholy and even a little bit of nostalgia — drawing out that subset of emotions that key into what once was but no longer is.
The feeling of loneliness was furthered by the way the show was lit — with a spotlight that focused tightly on each look as it came down the runway, and, thanks to a mirror-like coating on the floor cast the silhouette of each model up toward the ceiling of the Armory, where the shadows fluttered like shadow angels.
With an emphasis on the trapeze silhouette (all the better to evoke the idea of folded-back angel wings, right?), the collection’s standout pieces occupied the opposite ends of the wardrobe spectrum: the heavy and the light.
In the first camp were capes (a leopard-print number memorably opened the show), double-breasted cape coats as triangular as traffic cones, in navy blue or gray windowpane checks, and belted A-line coats in coral red and mint green (both so ’50s retro-looking they could easily make a “Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” cameo without looking out of place).
In the second category were airy dresses, pale-green slip dresses, tiered floral-festooned frocks and a lot of feathered pieces: off-the-shoulder ankle-length gowns in oily blue, inky black or dove gray, and our hands-down favorite, a babydoll dress composed entirely of sky blue feathers.
From start to finish, Jacobs’ fallen-angel-focused fall and winter 2019 collection was a thing of great — if loneliness-inducing — beauty.