From left: Zona, Carolina Herrera and Coach.
Photo-Illustration: by The Cut; Photos: Courtesy of Area, Carolina Herrera, trainer
Fashion Week, which ends Wednesday night, has created two great themes this season: Either come dressed for a performance or don’t wear anything. Or maybe just a bath towel. Maryam Nassir Zadeh closed her show with a girl in a white fabric dress. This was after Zadeh had paraded her daughters on the sidewalk on Forsyth Street, on the Lower East Side, and on the handball courts on Grand Street. Many of their tops consisted of a piece of cloth. One model wore what appeared to be two souvenir cotton coasters, braided and embroidered, held together with a string. The bottom half of Zadeh’s outfits, if you could call them that, weren’t much more substantial.
A colleague of mine complained that Zadeh was in a “styling arms race,” meaning she was trying to make a provocative statement with her pairings and shapes. I don’t give her much credit. This was a lazy effort. Watching the show, I got the feeling that Zadeh had been somewhere hot and heavenly this summer. The scanty tops and covers suggested a beach. But what does this mean on the gritty end of Chinatown? I liked that some guys shooting hoops next door didn’t bother to try to watch. And one more thing: it was clear that some of Zadeh’s fabrics were precious to her as they looked old, and her press notes referred to items being “reworked”. But perhaps it would be truer to say that she had endowed them with a priceless value, her general effort not justifying it. And that was annoying.
Maryam Nassir Zadeh
Photo: Madison Voelkel/ Courtesy of Maryam Nassir Zadeh
Fans of Area — Piotrek Panszczyk’s label, which debuted at the former Whitney Museum later Monday — know how to draw attention. As I stepped out onto the sidewalk, a heavily made-up woman in a pair of black lace tights and a black bustier was literally stopping traffic as she stood in the middle of Madison Avenue and made a grinding move with her bottom aimed at taxis who are waiting Meanwhile, schools on the Upper East Side had just let out, so the sidewalks were full of moms, gangs of kids in private school uniforms, and dogs. It was quite a scene.
Zone
Photo: Courtesy of Zona
Indeed, most of the performative action on Monday took place on the Upper East Side. This is not as strange as it may seem. Think of all the socialites over the decades who have prepared for shows in the grand halls of Pierre and Plaza, the era of Bill Blass and Oscar de la Renta. Think of the clothes horses hoping to catch the eye of the late photographer Bill Cunningham as he stood on the corner of Fifth Avenue and 57th Street. And think of the Met Ball circus in May.
Zone
Photo: Courtesy of Zona
What’s different now is that socialites have mostly been replaced by influencers and (generally minor) celebrities who arrive decked out in borrowed party clothes, glamorous hair and make-up even at 10am, although I should have been used to seeing women at the Carolina Herrera show in tulle, satin and diamonds at brunch time – designer Wes Gordon has found a place in the wardrobe – still seems too unreal to me. Again, it’s a performance on an almost loaded level as social media has undoubtedly increased interests for front row guests.
Carolina Herrera
Photo: Courtesy of Carolina Herrera
As for Gordon’s collection, it looked up-to-date and stylish. Hearing the pure voice of Barbra Streisand (from funny girl) on the sound system was unscathed as a model wearing a blue striped full-sleeved top with a pink floral evening skirt followed by a smiling Karlie Kloss in a one-shoulder striped summer dress with a little naked. the middle Gordon eases the big bow numbers — flared skirts in soft floral prints, an elegant cocktail dress with a tulle spray — and skips the hard details. This is what he has learned in recent years. The collection was also strong in somewhat more casual, not strictly “daytime” styles, like a sharp strapless column in wide black and white stripes, a raspberry beaded wool mini-suit and a cute black hat filled with net black.
“I want people to know that craft is not temporary,” Panszczyk told me after the “Zona” show. Can anyone doubt this after seeing a cowl-shaped coat made of strips of material studded around with dozens of silver metal cones? Or a tiny metal-embellished T-shirt with a pair of wide-leg pants made from a tangle of fabric strips that evoked electronic wires? Area operates in its own fantastical space, drawing on ancient and futuristic allusions, but if Panszczyk’s designs were less constructed, creativity wouldn’t matter, as he knows. He also included a number of straightforward styles, including a red beaded jumpsuit and a fun crop top and mini in what looked like raw denim with random denim strips folded and printed on the surface. But the show pieces are the main thing, and quite frankly they bare the body with cloth wraps or flat, beaded bows (mostly) that cover the sexual parts.
The coach took over the Park Avenue Armory, where he erected a large wooden platform in the center with the audience at some distance above the riser. Although Stuart Vevers, the creative director, was inspired by the idea of New Yorkers commuting in the summer between the city and the beaches of Rockaway and Coney Island, it did not appear. Moreover, the clothes looked a little sad and faded. Vevers said upfront that she wanted to “strip” things down—right down to the basic leather jackets (some of the clothing reworked), shorts, and sequin doll dresses. The leather jackets were great, but one wanted more color and, yes, more bare skin.
The coach.
Photo: Courtesy of the coach
Rebecca Hessel Cohen, founder of LoveShackFancy, has no illusions about what many women want: tons of pink, the more frothy the better. I wandered up to Madison after Coach’s beach bash and joined Cohen’s raucous music-filled garden party at the Cooper Hewitt on 90th Street. The place was filled with women and girls at LoveShack, its fear and romance a throwback to the cotillons and feminine beauty of classic Hollywood films.
LoveShackFancy
Photo: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for NYFW: The Shows
Or is it still? You can make a fortune by giving people what they want and then repeating it over and over again. I admired the massive banks of nearly flushed pink and ivory roses, champagne tables and pink sugar macaroons. And then I headed out into the wilder areas of the Upper East Side, passing a French bulldog and a golden retriever with their owners.
LoveShackFancy
Photo: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for NYFW: The Shows
