F  L  A  U  N  T

![Alt Text]() How the absence of Raf Simons’ Calvin Klein show would impact the New York fall show season posed a question in perpetual debates and discourses throughout the eight days full calendar program that was very weak on the fashion front. What Simons brought to Calvin Klein and to American fashion in his three shows for one of the pillars and anchor of New York was to frame the Calvin Klein brand with the narrative as the torch bearer of American pop culture, of which fashion is always an integral part. As part of that construct, Simons incorporated all the possible and easily identifiable icons – the cowboys, the prairie girl, Jaws, Mrs. Robinson, Andy Warhol democratic art and in particular his 1983 photo journal ‘America’, the firefighters, popcorns, car crashes, criminals – and casted a range of models that are the new face of the country. The absence of designers with this capacity to craft stories that link clothes in an emotional strain, has left a void behind. A New York season particularly light and fragile on content, for all the clothes coming down the catwalk with just several designers who proved otherwise with exceptional shows. One show in particular came at the absolute end of the show week, in the vast open space of the Park Avenue Armory. Practically in the dark, with white focus spotlights shining on models as they came within range – Karlie Kloss, Christina Kruse and a special appearance by Christy Turlington Burns – wearing cocoon coats, spectacular floral print satin cocktail dress with feather embellishment or an off shoulder black taffeta v-neckline corset dress decorated with beads and feather in the front. Jacobs show was less about telling any story in particular; rather the show was about the story of fashion - of how the craft and the careful construction of clothes can create a marvel of a garment and of how all these clothes, some sumptuous and a few more mundane, can deliver an emotional response not only to an eager audience but also to a respective customer. It was the New York season’s strongest show and one of Jacobs’ best in recent year, merging the wonders of fashion with a keen but not overt sense of commercial viability. In a similar vein, Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough at Proenza Schouler deployed the methodology and craftsmanship of making clothes to dissect and reassembled garments very much like the way the conceptual artist Sol LeWitt did with the variations and permutations possible within the basis structure of a cube. Proenza Schouler had taken LeWitt’s investigation of the essence and concept of art using three dimensional cubes that started with the simple cube and stacked them in multiple ways as his grammatical tool, leaving to create structures made to breakdown a garment and recompose it at times with just parts onto another garment leaving the final product with a state of unfinished. “Pieces were created with remnants of things that once were, thus calling on one’s memory to complete the composition,” the designers said in an email post-show. That meaning the front of a black leather biker jacket as a vest on top of a dark navy coat and matching pant with the leather belt looping behind, part of a black jacket lapel as a scarf on top of a leather trench, cut out black backless knits with belt paired with pattern mock tank, half of an acid wash denim jacket on top of a khaki coat or a knit bra with belt on top of a blue knit dress. The collection had all the hallmark of Proenza Schouler as they left behind last season’s brief excursion with an all denim collection in favor of returning their signatures like the mannish coats and jackets, the fine range of tight ribbed knitwear, the cut-away and unusual inserts like a part of a ruffle leather skirt tucked underneath a navy blouse and pants. The show felt like the first of many chapters to come since they returned to New York after a year in Paris. Despite the familiar stomping by the young friends who walked the clothes at Vaquera – a collective comprised of Patric DiCaprio, Claire Sullivan and Bryn Taubensee, there was something poetic about the outright rejection of the symbols of wealth and establishment as the designers magnified and ridiculed the sartorial attire associated with the upper class. In a Xeroxed note given after the show, the designers described a duplex penthouse circa 1927 with all the enclosed tropes – double height foyer with Corinthian columns, dining room with jade obelisk, regency style bedrooms, and the roof terrace. In clothes that translated to a sort of bastardization of the kind of clothes one would expect from the wealthy Upper East siders namely the designers poked fun at what they saw perhaps as the unequal status in society. In the Vaquera world, a formal double breasted jacket was now enlarged to become a super oversize coat-dress worn with a vest underneath, a school boarding school girls uniform became a cropped stripe puff sleeve blouse with brown skirt and neck collar the size of a vest, a lady-like bow blouse came in pink satin with long skirt, and a regular ball gown was now inflated to giant proportions with white and lilac stripes and a big white gift wrap bow on the front chest. Blouse or corset in curtains fabrics, towels pants, wallpaper cummerbund or dresses in lampshade fabrics were other garments inspired by the duplex’s décor. It was a radically different reality for those not accustomed to the real thing. Michael Kors had all the accouterments down to the minute details that reminisced the heyday of the Studio 54 era in the late 70’s in clothes – the patchwork leather blouson, coat and dress, the violet sequined dress with matching feather boa scarf, the black and purple floral print ruffle dress also with feather scarf, or the oversized crystallized lapel tuxedo jacket with black feather sleeves paired with black hot pants, and in atmosphere – with Barry Manilow dressed in a red sparkling jacket and black pants performing live in the finale singing his hit ‘Copacabana’. And for men, the shiny Mongolian lamb biker, Studio 54 logo shirt, MKC large belt, flare washed jeans, the shiny lilac snakeskin blouson, spread collar print shirt and flare window pane pants or shiny metallic flare pant suit all worn with chunky leather platform heel boots. The models seemed to be walking right off the paparazzi photos from the era where going out required a lot of work. While Studio 54 and the disco era is very much part of the American identity, and a very specific one for a small group of people exposed to glamor of being there while the rest observed from party photographs in newspapers and magazines, the theme did provide the Kors collection with a cohesive bond, however the show seemed more like a time warp than now– even if the clothes can sure find new fans. At Coach, now in his fifth years, the designer Stuart Vevers left MidWest America for the California coast on a journey along the scenic Route 1, where an encounter at the famous restaurant Nepenthe, the Big Sur hangout spot with panoramic views, lead to a collaboration with the artist Kaffe Fassett’s psychedelic floral design that appeared on garments throughout the show with a strong merchandising cast in outerwear, especially those floral prints on shearling coats and vests. To make the collection more in tune with what people wear on the street, Vevers mixed light chiffon print dresses, a Coach 1941 staples, like a purple print short dress with plaid long walk shorts or a rigid floral print coat with soft black sheer chiffon shirt dress underneath combining soft and hard elements into one look. Great shearling coats and vests came in a range of colors and patchworks that anchored a commercial collection showing that lacked the juice that fuel fashion. Tory Burch posited her fall 2019 collection within the narrative of the Black Mountain College, founded in 1933, a breeding ground that shaped many of the great American artists of the twentieth century like Cy Wombly, Robert Rauschenberg, Willem de Kooning and Merce Cunningham. “This season is a mix match of revamped classics – floral prints, graphic stripes, menswear materials and romantic silhouettes. There’s a modern eccentricity to raw fringes, exaggerated ruffles, knife pleats, cut-glass jewelry and deconstructed bags and sharp boots,” Burch said in a printed show program note. The idea of an academic art community providing the clothes with a narrative that allowed Burch to be more experimental and more playful with her clothes than in past seasons, compared to past shows that tended to be focused more on products. Last season, where Burch recalled how her parents took months long boat trips and the kind of clothes they would pack and wear for these far away journeys; whereas this time, the art college backdrop provided a thread that weaved together different facets of Burch’s fall clothes. Wool felt grey or olive/blue long coats with brass buckles, red and black print blouses and long skirts with pleat trims, or a simple white cotton blouse with ruffle neckline and checked viscose short skirt and ended with black layered chiffon dress, wool striped poncho and stripe crepe de chine skirt, or embroidered cardigan and print silk skirt. This being an art environment, the mountain paisley print block silk floor length dress alongside a satin down coat with floral lining makes total sense in the way Burch had added a more bohemian element to the clothes. Yet the striped orange and brown wool blazer and pants with personal initials on the pockets can be worn at any school or at any other non-academic milieu. On a particularly hushed and brisk Monday morning, faux show attendees showed up on Greenwich Street, seemingly a world away from the line of photographers outside of show venues, flaunting their outfits in hopes of obtaining a photograph of their extraneous fashion week look. Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen displayed their fall clothes in their third-floor concrete office-showroom complete with wooden planks functioning as temporary chairs. A world away from the cacophonies, models strolled nonchalantly, wearing black thigh-high boots, leather sandals, paired with new coats, jackets, and shirts that explored the interplay of earth-tone hues, luxurious fabrics, and cuts made to emphasize linear silhouettes. Models donned outfits like a grey double-breasted, lapel less jacket with matching cigarette pants and a mock neck blouse or a camel cashmere suit paired with a hidden button jacket, a large funnel neck blouse, and either a front slit skirt or matching slim pants. Dresses came in several iterations either as black flare wool long dress, as white cotton oversize turtleneck with embroidered trims or as a simple long sleeve turtleneck long wool dress. A rare evening V-neck white dress made an appearance, decorated with clear crystal beads, the only garment with any sort of embellishment. Long reversible shearling coats and fur coats were paired with hand-knit, neutral tone, cashmere dresses. Cotton blouses with longer sleeves were worn untucked to enhance the ease and rendered the overall look to be much more casual. Behind the surface of the ever-so-present soft cashmere laid the handiwork and design elements, often in plain sight but also so subtle that one had to look closely to discern the way the fabrics were gathered perpendicularly to form two rows of lines that enhanced the chest and waist of a camel collarless long sleeve coat. Volume and fitted shape came together in garments, allowing one element to interact with another with little needs for any accompanying fairy tales. A breakout this season was Tomo Koizumi, who’s first showing as a guest at the Marc Jacobs Madison Avenue store was based off of pure joy of fashion as it celebrated unrestrained creativity with a series of colorful polyester ruffle dresses – from orange and red ruffle sleeves to red, white and pink ruffle skirts. While the clothes were not entirely conceptual, they would require the designer to carefully plan out his next step to move from a hit show into establishing a small business. But Koizumi certainly started on the right foot, showing that he could transform simple materials into astounding garments. The 29-year-old Raul Lopez, former co-founder of Hood By Air, worked under the reversed order of his first name Luar and showed his genderfluid clothes while celebrating his New York and Dominican roots. The collection of deconstructed clothes – thin pant legs each shredded into two pieces to reveal underpants beneath, black Saga fur blousons with giant sleeves, pinstriped dresses slashed on the sides and extreme wide-leg denim pants with front zippers. Lopez is one the few underground designers growing up in the late-night clubs of New York whose aesthetics are part of the accompanying scenes although these clothes had greater commercial viability than previous looks. These clothes are the manifestations of a generation of young people who grew up with less restriction on how they should view patriarchy and norms. In a similar way, it seemed as though small changes were everywhere. Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta progressed this season with a finesse permeating throughout their show, but without surrendering the independent spirit they stood for that shows in the language of their clothes. Tom Ford abandoned all the glitz and sequins of last season for a show including strongly feminine, finely tailored clothes that looked rather sensual on the male models. Jeremy Scott left behind his kaleidoscope of colors for a tabloid newsprint theme of stark black and white prints and sporty clothes. Anna Sui remained true to her own sense of aesthetics without compromises – this time she took her collection through the colorful lenses of the 60’s and 70’s. One cannot really fault Philipp Plein for the arduous tasks and efforts for staging two separate shows in between a three-course dinner at the Grill, the former Four Seasons Restaurant off of Park Avenue, to provide the right atmosphere for what was mainly a client event rather than a formal press show. The clothes were as expected and the context worked. After a serving of salad, the first segment of the show felt a bit too luxurious as older gentlemen strolled out in crocodile coats, blousons, and silk velvet tuxedos for the higher end Billionaire Couture purchased and re-launched in 2016, as it’s catered to a specific market. Just after the waiters cleared the main course, models came out in a range of sporty coats, camo suits, skin-tight dresses, and a range of puffer and outerwear with a visible logo etched in to mark the 20th year of the brand. But the show that connected most with a wider sense of the culture space was Telfar Clemens at the rock concert hall Irving Plaza. Staged as a multidiscipline performance with the actor-playwright Jeremy O. Harris narrating a four-part monologue alongside dancers choreographed by Xavier Cha, DJ Ashland Mines, and live performance by Oyinda, the rock band Ho99o9, and the rappers Butch Dawson and Na-Kei, Telfar had his models come on stage and fall into the awaiting crowd of the brand’s supporters who then caught each one and carried them forward. Theater, fashion, dance, and music were all combined to form a community just like all of us together form a ‘country,’ which was the title of this breakthrough show where the clothes were familiar signatures. Clemens, an outsider to the established fashion system, very much like Raf Simons– a foreigner looking to ascertain American identity, created a diverse community in his show that represented the current face of America. He did so because of the pressure for inclusivity that is exerted on fashion brands over the last several years. Telfar’s immersive experience defines a new roadmap for American fashion at this point in search of a new identity and surely a new audience. How to achieve this goal was up in the air and the fall shows provide little clues as to the path forward except for a few designers who stuck to their own vision. “Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach,” the artist Sol DeWitt once said about the work of conceptual artist. Few fashion designers today are considered conceptual artists in the sense that they execute bold ideas and with a grand scheme.

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Photos courtesy of respective fashion houses.