Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Shutterstock, Courtesy of Proenza Schouler, Getty Images
An extraordinary amount of effort goes into feeding people the same things over and over again. In American fashion, it’s nostalgia — the well-worn look of Dad’s baggy corduroys, the Shetland sweater that’s been washed so many times it feels like a baby blanket, the shapeless black dress in lining fabric that recalls grunge. These were among the styles in the collections of Tory Burch and Stuart Vevers of Coach, but the same attitude could be found everywhere this week.
Meanwhile, Burch held her show in the Breuer Building, home of Sotheby’s, and Vevers took over Cipriani, near Wall Street, with hundreds of people helping to make this stuff look “new.”
On Tuesday, the team at Ralph Lauren transformed the Jack Shainman Gallery — in a neo–Italian Renaissance tower built during the gilded age for an insurance company — into a kind of English country home, with Oriental rugs layered on the floor. There was much hunting brown in the collection, with tweed jackets, snap-brim caps, a big shearling coat over a pantsuit, and frilly high-neck blouses. I kept seeing Joely Richardson in The Gentlemen striding out in one of Lady Halstead’s pretty if dated costumes.
From left: Photo: Isidore Montag / Gorunway / Courtesy of Ralph LaurenPhoto: Isidore Montag / Gorunway / Courtesy of Ralph Lauren
From top: Photo: Isidore Montag / Gorunway / Courtesy of Ralph LaurenPhoto: Isidore Montag / Gorunway / Courtesy of Ralph Lauren
Lauren knows how to put on a show, of course. (The designer, who is 86, made a brief runway appearance.) His company showed a fantastic men’s collection last month in Milan. But, on the whole, the styling and fit of his women’s clothes remain stuck in time. Pretty or not, they could have well come out of a costumer’s closet. At some point, the company will decide to renovate its style — just as Giorgio Armani will reach the same difficult decision. But it deserves that attention. There is probably no other American fashion label more fun to think about — what it could and should be.
Although the clothes at Coach treaded very close to what you might find at your local Goodwill — frumpy checked skirts, varsity shirts, sagging washed-satin dresses with tattered hems — I liked the darker element that Vevers injected into the line. Curiously, he said he had been watching The Wizard of Oz with his kids, and he was struck by the film’s famous transition from black and white to Technicolor, from the bleakness of Kansas to the brightness of Dorothy’s tornado-flung journey. But I’ve noticed that a number of designers are referencing grunge and, as well, the early anti-luxury attitude of Martin Margiela. It obviously speaks to how a lot of people want to dress, but it’s also a response, I think, to the overly feminine and bourgeois clothes that many big brands are pushing.
From left: Photo: Pixelformula/SIPA/ShutterstockPhoto: Pixelformula/SIPA/Shutterstock
From top: Photo: Pixelformula/SIPA/ShutterstockPhoto: Pixelformula/SIPA/Shutterstock
For Burch, her patron saints were her father and Bunny Mellon, a well-known art collector and gardener. They were the most stylish people she ever knew, she said, and yet neither was into fashion. Her dad loved a pair of cords. And her wide-wale corduroy pants — in tans and blush — were the best thing in a solid collection, along with an array of polished town coats.
From left: Photo: Giovanni Giannoni/WWD via Getty ImagesPhoto: Estrop/Getty Images
From top: Photo: Giovanni Giannoni/WWD via Getty ImagesPhoto: Estrop/Getty Images
New York still turns out groupies for Collina Strada, even in the cold. Hillary Taymour called her latest collection “The World Is a Vampire.” She said, “Right now, I’m trying to figure out how much to emotionally let in from the outside world.” Taymour seemed to have the answer with a darkly seductive collection of dresses in her freewheeling romantic style, with a fresh and surprising use of murky plaid.
From left: Photo: Filippo Fior / Gorunway.com / Courtesy of Collina StradaPhoto: Filippo Fior / Gorunway.com / Courtesy of Collina Strada
From top: Photo: Filippo Fior / Gorunway.com / Courtesy of Collina StradaPhoto: Filippo Fior / Gorunway.com / Courtesy of Collina Strada
Although the brand 6397 was started 13 years ago by Stella Ishii, who runs a well-known showroom downtown, it has acquired more edge — and followers — in the past few years, thanks to Lizzie Owens, who spent a number of years designing menswear for Alexander Wang and her own brand.
Owens is also into wide-wale corduroy this season, and I loved her more polished and considered treatment of familiar styles, notably a raw-edged, multi-seam dress in silk crepe, a cool slip in velvet for layering, and a cocoa-brown suit in wool with frayed edges. The appeal of 6397 is in the quality of the make and in the prices. That wool suit, for example, will sell for $795 for the jacket and $525 for the skirt. As Owens says of the label’s target customer, “She’s that creative woman who’s still pragmatic.”
From left: Photo: Cathy HorynPhoto: Cathy Horyn
From top: Photo: Cathy HorynPhoto: Cathy Horyn
Photo: Courtesy of 6397
The strength of Rachel Scott’s first collection for Proenza Schouler, the label founded more than 20 years ago by Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez — now at Loewe — was also in its sense of women’s lives. Scott told me a few days before the show, “I needed to understand that the brand had legs to exist beyond the founders. Because it very much felt like them, and I couldn’t pinpoint who the woman was.” Yet the closer she looked at the brand, the more connecting elements she found. She also spoke to longtime Proenza customers. One woman told her she liked the fit of a jacket with a high armhole, and so Scott did such a jacket but in a softer material.
From left: Photo: Courtesy of Proenza SchoulerPhoto: Courtesy of Proenza Schouler
From top: Photo: Courtesy of Proenza SchoulerPhoto: Courtesy of Proenza Schouler
Scott also stayed away from the “uptown-downtown” tension that played into Proenza. “That idea doesn’t exist for me,” she said. “A woman today can exist in different spaces.”
From left: Photo: Courtesy of Proenza SchoulerPhoto: Courtesy of Proenza Schouler
From top: Photo: Courtesy of Proenza SchoulerPhoto: Courtesy of Proenza Schouler
All in all, that freedom and openness is what Scott tried to express, with a focus on looks that are comfortable and practical, like the opening sleeveless dress in a blend of turquoise and dark gray Donegal tweed and elongating suits in wool, and a denim that was washed, hand-sanded, and then given a coating. A number of styles had an off-kilter gesture, like a pair of sailor pants with its white button slightly askew. The attitude feels “Proenza.”
I have a feeling that many women will respond to these clothes when they see them firsthand. But the show itself felt a bit flat. It needed a jolt of humor and more color and novelty to go with the familiar and pragmatic.