Michael Kors
Classic menswear-style tailoring, sweeping coats, knit dressing, the clash of sleek and raw, chocolate brown as the new black.… This is a Michael Kors season.
“What we show we make and people wear,” the designer said during a preview. “The revolution shouldn't be real clothes.”
And yet, at least this New York Fashion Week, it has been, as Proenza Schouler, Brandon Maxwell, Gabriela Hearst, Tibi and more have brought back the seemingly radical concept of timeless clothes to cherish, to style and to wear.
Kors took inspiration from O.G. influencers, including feminist trailblazer Gloria Steinem, who received a round of applause from Molly Ringwald as she headed to her seat at the Wednesday morning show.
“Influencer has taken on a whole new meaning, but used to be we'd talk about them as powerful women who were never afraid of expressing themselves with fashion, whether it was Jane Fonda or Gloria Steinem, who I met in 1985 when we did a story headlined, ‘Smart women wear short skirts,'” Kors said.
And short shorts. The opening look, a taupe wool overcoat and sweater over chocolate brown suede shorts and boots, with a hip-hugging wide belt reissued from Kors' 2004 collection, was all Gloria in her '70s urban bohemian glory.
“Today, we have generations of women who are still trying to show their power, their strength, their intelligence, but at the same time are not afraid of fashion, and it runs the gamut from Amanda Gorman to Nancy Pelosi to Serena Williams,” Kors said.
The designer gave them the tools, with plenty of impeccably tailored coats and some of the best shearlings of the week, one in ivory pieced together from Mongolian sheep hides.
“I'm a big believer in a statement coat,” he said, acknowledging that a wardrobe of coats does present its travel challenges. “You need a coat bag or a DHL number,”
Kors deadpanned.
Tailoring was made to move, with cape sleeves, slashed skirts and flared pants, and chocolate brown fringed dresses added another bohemian element.
Kors elevated knit dressing, on a chocolate brown chiffon-jersey-cashmere cold shoulder turtleneck dress and on a chic two-piece taupe cashmere set with flared pants and hip slung belt.
“I'm into tonal because at the end of the day, it makes everyone feel confident because they know they're putting the right thing on. It's easier to get dressed.”
For evening, it was all about the modern mermaid, as he calls it, in sequin embroidered jersey bodysuits and tailored trousers, keyhole dresses, flared jumpsuits or fishtail gowns in daytime colors of chocolate or taupe. “Someone needs to wear this to the Oscars,”
Kors said of a sequin jumpsuit under a matching camel coat.
He could be onto something.
It was interesting at the Critics Choice Awards last month to see Hollywood starting to gravitate toward more modern and minimalist eveningwear, with Cate Blanchett wearing a Max Mara taupe linen shirt and maxiskirt and Busy Philipps a gray flannel scoop neck gown by St. John. Perhaps it will be a kind of wearable revolution.
“[Barbra] Streisand won her first Oscar in pants. Lauren Hutton killed the Oscars in shorts….Sharon Stone wore a white shirt and skirt and it was one of the most memorable looks of all time,” Kors said, advising stars to get out of their comfort zone. “Different doesn't mean it has to be ridiculous; there's different and special that's chic, soigné, sophisticated and cool.”
Altuzarra
“This season came as a visceral reaction to the world we live in. I wanted something that felt really unbridled, very lush, exciting and embraced imagination. I think sometimes the world around us seems so fraught and I just wanted something that felt almost like a jewel of a surprise,” Joseph Altuzarra said during a preview ahead of his fall runway show, held at the New York Public Library. The collection served as Altuzarra's final chapter to his four-part study of nature, mythology and rituals; fall nodding to author Charlotte Higgins “Greek Myths: A New Retelling,” for its femaleprotagonist point of view.
Altuzarra set the tone by opening the show with an explosion of color emerging from darkness a la giant parkas boasting painterly Rorschach prints, said to be designed in the same abstract manner as the folded inkblot tests.
“A lot of the artworks that are in the collection come from looking at the ways in which people would access magic and creativity — Rorschach, ink blots, reading the tea leaves. We wanted everything to feel triumphant, mythic and really fearless,” Altuzarra explained, building the idea further into a stellar brushed wool coat and cropped peplum jackets atop satin column skirts and easy knit dressing (some with ombre interpretations of signature shibori), all cut in lengthy proportions and styled for fall appeal with leather opera gloves and chunky knit hats.
“I had a very specific idea about silhouette — I wanted almost everything to be long and have this very evening feeling,” the designer said, nailing the idea of aspiration and wearability most prominently with wrapped, twisted and knotted leather dresses and mermaid skirts and a procession of draped and hooded grecian jersey goddess gowns.
A selection of feather and botanical hand-painted printed and embroidered numbers furthered his idea of divination. “The idea with the whole end of the collection is almost like nature overtaking the body. The idea that these natural motifs becoming the spine or the lungs,” Altuzarra said, rendering the tattoo-like motifs anatomically before closing the show full-circle with over-the-top (albeit highly crafted), enveloping satin evening parkas, cut in ‘50s and ‘60s couture-like shapes clearly meant for the red carpet.
“The sense I'm getting is that customers and buyers are looking for emotion,” Altuzarra said, delivering for fall with sensual, mythological-bent repetition.
— Emily Mercer
Nayon
In just her second season, Nayon Kim managed to do what many designers cannot do in 10 outings: She presented a polished, tightly edited collection with a distinct point of view that is ready to sell in stores.
At her self-titled brand Nayon's first
New York Fashion Week presentation, Kim offered a highly focused lineup of tailored and sophisticated clothes. The collection, called “Brut Generation,” was inspired by Brutalist architecture and the often-grim reality facing Kim's generation of peers — and so she focused on varied depths of black, charcoal and gray.
“I have these refined forms and then wanted to include my viewpoint on our generation with a certain rawness. I found a quote in the Bible that says, ‘The light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not comprehend it.' I feel like that's our generation right now and that's the whole reason that there is no color in the collection,” she said.
A tableau of five floor-length wool and cashmere blend coats — some of them cinched with chain belts that will be sold as part of the look — presented a clear vision from a 27-year-old designer who graduated from Parsons last year.
Her highfalutin tailored look — a streamlined version of the princess seam coats and opera-going fare popular in New York in the late '80s and early '90s — offers a strong counterpoint to the casualization fashion has seen in recent years. Kim's route to a dressier self, though, also offers a sense of ease with an element of uniform dressing.
It was evident in a strapless wool gown that — while aimed at black tie dressing — felt modern with an undercurrent of haberdashery. Those stunning floor-length coats were also offered in abbreviated shapes as part of a skirt or pantsuit. And jersey pieces that were digitally printed with a concrete texture motif offered the Nayon shopper some slinky, cool pieces to layer underneath.
The designer lives between New York and Seoul, where she has a strong foothold in an emerging fashion industry that now wields influence across the globe. All of Nayon's clothes will be produced in South Korea, and the samples shown indicate the strong quality to emerge from Seoul's Dongdaemun-area sewing workshops. Even the fashion industry veterans in attendance were impressed. — Misty White Sidell
Christian Cowan
Christian Cowan's party-girl design aesthetic got a mature update for fall, with the designer referencing “female legends of a bygone era,” like Judy Garland,
Marilyn Monroe and Marlene Dietrich.
“The inspiration this season was really about these legends and their connection with the queer community from early on,” he said before his runway show Tuesday night. “Something that I find so beautiful and my reasoning for thinking that they loved each other so much was they channeled their sorrow into their creativity. I think that's the talent the queer community has and these amazing women. I always do glamorous and fabulous, but there's also a dark side to that glamour, which so often these amazing women, their lives ended quite tragic.”
There was an obvious somber tone in Cowan's fall collection; however, it was blended with the designer's signature opulence. Looks included a sculptural black minidress with feathers swishing out of the bodice, a silver sequin oversize blazer (which was also worn by Cowan's boyfriend Sam Smith, who sat front row) and a blazer and trouser set embellished with chandelier-like beading.
The heavier pieces were balanced with minimal silk and cotton poplin styles that opened the show. The minimal pieces were unexpected given Cowan's usual design aesthetic, but added a maturity that hinted at the evolution of the brand.
“We're at a pivotal point in our brand where I think at one point I was doing what was me when I was 22,” Cowan explained. “Now it feels like we've jumped forward and this is the modern-day Christian
Cowan brand and what we stand for.”
In line with this design shift, Cowan explained the brand archived its older images on its social media platforms and relaunched its website with new imagery to reflect a more mature, somber vibe. He also explained this shift will be seen in his retail strategy. After hosting his first pop-up shop in New York last year, the designer stated he has plans to open more across the U.S. in the near future, naming Las Vegas as one of the upcoming locations.
It wouldn't be a Christian Cowan collection without some standout party looks. The designer stayed true to his glamorous aesthetic, but gave it a revamp with a range of looks like a silk slipdress with an embroidered hem, a pink feathered strapless dress and a floor-length silver sequined dress paired with a black duster that evoked a cool, downtown girl vibe.
The collection came full circle with the finale look, which consisted of a model struggling to walk under the weight of a massive feathered coat and headdress.
“I wanted to personify the idea of giving everything you've got to glamour and it killing you,” Cowan said. “I have this wonderful model from the same area in Spain that I'm from — Galicia — and she is struggling under the weight of this giant cape. It weighs so much and she's got a headpiece and this gown and the heels. The idea is that she's braving through it, but it's tough.”
On his desired takeaway from the collection, Cowan explained he hopes people understand the impact that his muses made on the queer community.
“I feel like not enough people — at least in my contemporary age group — appreciate the beauty of these amazing women and also how pivotal they were at a point where our community had zero rights,” he said. “They were really the first people to show love to us in a public setting, so I would really like people to know that more. I want people to go home and listen to the Judy Garland album at Carnegie Hall. It will change their lives.” — Layla Ilchi
Bach Mai
Bach Mai's fall 2023 presentation was a long time in the making. The designer explained he'd been wanting to present a collection at the DiMena Center for Classical Music for some time, and ultimately decided his fall collection, titled “Cave of the Sirens,” was the right fit.
“Welcome to the cave of sirens,”
Mai said during his presentation on Wednesday. “[The collection] was really about light — the exploration of light. I was really enraptured by this idea of being in a dark sea cave and then this ray of light is just piercing through this cold darkness.”
With choreography produced by Haus of Bambi, models danced among themselves at the center of the fog-filled basement, twirling about in the eveningwear collection that offered black and blue pieces designed in tulle, Lurex and other light-reflecting fabrics and materials.
The collection caught the eye of musician Debbie Harry, who was in attendance with her goddaughter.
“It's beautiful — I mean [Mai's] got all of these different elements and I love the fact that he's doing it in this really creative environment,” she said. “I have to applaud the models. It's very brave of them to do this because they have to be creative with their movement.”
The look: A balance of ethereal couture with moody eveningwear
Quote of note: “With the Karl Lagerfeld exhibition coming up, [the collection] was really an homage to how influential Karl Lagerfeld was to me in my youth and understanding of couture,” Mai said. “It's really an exploration of creating a little black dress at the end of the day.”
Key pieces: Mai's couture sensibility remained strong and he continued his strategy from last season of evolving his silhouettes and design elements. Mai experimented with sequins and new lightreflecting fabrics — with pieces such as a tulle and sequined blue gown and a blue Lurex minidress over a long black skirt. A nod back to his inspiration, Mai introduced a mermaid silhouette, seen in styles like a light-reflecting floor-length gown.
The takeaway: While Mai takes inspiration from couturiers who've influenced him, his collection is unique to his own DNA, looking to a modern design aesthetic to create opulent couture-like pieces.
Koltson
On Tuesday afternoon, Robert Rodriguez welcomed guests into a gallery-style presentation to introduce his new sustainable luxury eveningwear label Koltson by Robert Rodriguez.
“[The brand started] immediately after I left Halston. One of the reasons why I left is because this was something that was in the back of my mind and I really wanted to pursue because I felt it was my passion. I have had the name registered since 2019 — to me, it's all about timing, and this felt like the right time,” Rodgriuez, the former chief creative officer of Halston and his prior namesake label, said in a preview call.
“What I wanted to do was collaborate with different artists and bring art and fashion together in a unique way while supporting our local communities and production, because I feel that's part of our sustainability efforts. Something must be done, and I hope I can play a part in it,” he explained during the presentation, which featured large-scale paintings by New York abstract expressionist Vicky Barranguet hung behind Rodriguez' fashionable evening takes on her works.
The designer said he collaborated with Barranguet to choose the works' palette and mood — noting “something abstract, modern and romantic” was of importance — before translating the paintings' details into prints, foils and hand-drawn embroideries on his draped silhouettes
(all of which were made from certified and natural fabrics). For instance, a crepe minidress with ostrich feather neckline; a backless gold metal draped jersey gown; printed strapless minis, and a double-layer sheer georgette caftan gown with feather embroideries. Updated, sexier takes on the caftan — which Rodriguez dubbed “a blank canvas” — was prominently featured throughout.
Through the marriage of fashion, art and sustainability, Rodriguez' collection embodied elegance with a fresh face.
Cynthia Rowley
On Monday night at Sony Hall, Cynthia Rowley hosted her first stand-up comedy “fashion show” featuring an all-star cast of female comedians — Nikki Glaser, Rachel Feinstein, Arden Myrin, Rosebud Baker, Claudia Oshry, Ego Nwodim and Michelle Buteau — with host of the evening, Esther Ku, and DJ Rachel Winters.
Last summer, Rowley held a stand-up comedy night featuring Seth Herzog and Heidi Garner at her Montauk, New York, store, which influenced the designer to bring her longstanding dream of hosting her favorite ladies on one stage (with help from Herzog, who chose the lineup) during New York Fashion Week.
For the upbeat event, Rowley designed fall collection looks rooted in her brand's optimistic, feminine DNA for each comedian.
“When you're designing a collection, it's all about one message, but the goal here was to dress each strong woman's personality and make them feel comfortable on stage. These women work so hard, go out there and basically bare their souls. I think in the same way comedy can give you confidence, so can the clothes when you have them on and feel good. It's a win-win — two worlds that both have the same goals,” Rowley said post- show.
For instance, Ku in a pastel micro paillette tank with macro paillette mini skirt; Glaser and Myrin in varying bright red scuba-looking outfits; Feinstein in a cropped and striped rugby top and highlow skirt; Baker in a tiered fluid top with 3D floral applique and silver bell bottoms; Oshry in a silky dark floral wrap set; Nwodim in a stellar boxy bright blue suit atop a micro silver bra top, and Buteau in a sheer floral, belted frock.
While the focus of the night was all about escaping the current state of the world and having a good laugh (there were plenty), Rowley's joyful designs added to the positive energy.
“Happy clothes, happy women, happy crowd. Fashion can bring joy, and that's always been my goal.” — Emily Mercer
Marina Moscone
“This woman is putting her foot forward and is a little more courageous, experimental and sexy. I felt the impulse to make the collection more free and risk-taking,” Marina Moscone said of her surprisingly revealing fall collection, later adding, “The nakedness or siren-y aspect we haven't really done, or if we have, it's been more covered and layered up.”
For the look book, the designer cropped a pair of trousers into hot shorts and styled them with signature tailoring that skimmed closer to the body with nipped waists and higher breaks. But experimentation looked best through Moscone's knack for fabric and texture manipulation. For instance, strong deconstructed bustier coated canvas numbers; fluid jersey and pleated shiny plissé minis with asymmetric draping, and paneled chiffon and jersey dresses, cut on the bias and bonded together to create tension through its rippled silhouette. Leaning into the popular, skin-baring trend, there were also pretty boned slip dresses in new mid and short lengths, and draped foulard-inspired minidresses atop twisted crop bandeaus (a few in a vinyl-y faux leather).
Moscone's vibrant pops of color proved strong, especially in a duvet topcoat, and were created by taking bleeding rose, hibiscus and lilac flowers onto silks — the idea continued with a beautiful, unique nubby sheath embroidered in thousands of tiny looped silk threads (each one done one-by-one).
Maria McManus
This season, Maria McManus said she was very much inspired by Irish singersongwriter Sinéad O'Connor — not for her style, but rather her bravery to be outspoken. Images of Dublin in the ‘90s were also featured within her mood board, which might've leant itself as inspiration to the collection's slight ‘90s sensibility. Yet the biggest conversation about fall encompassed the importance of sustainability — the core of her luxe, relaxed label.
“I've been doing a lot of different meetings with people and talks with different entrepreneurs who are in the sustainability fields, and we're sort of all at the point where we're like, ‘Should we be more in policy and politics — is that the only way we're going to move the needle?' Because it just feels so slow what we're all doing right now.”
However, McManus continued to stride forward in fashion and pushed the needle with responsible sourcing and upcycled, certified and organic materials. Standouts in the collection included a new selection of Naia Renew button downs and enveloping quilted coats; slimcut suiting; a brushed bouclé “caped” sweater, paired with a zip-front ribbed tube skirt; distressed extra fine merino wool Aran knits, and a recycled polyester tank covered in hand-done deadstock beads.