NEW YORK — Fashion Week is underway for fall-winter 2015-16, with dozens of designers presenting their collections. Here are reports from three shows.
Thom Browne: Mourning becomes him
If you’re going to be in mourning, you might as well wear something to die for.
That was the theory behind Thom Browne’s darkly beautiful fashion show, and we do mean dark — every item was black. And if you were close enough to see the intricate fabric work and tailoring on his 40 mourning outfits, you knew instantly that no funeral could possibly be this exquisite. And that’s even before you got to the models’ heads, which bore the handiwork of milliner Stephen Jones.
But before the mourning came the death. Browne placed his story in an old-fashioned, wood-paneled operating theater, perhaps in the 18th century. The audience, which included singer Nicki Minaj, sat in what felt like church pews, looking down. On three gurneys lay three young women, all in white. Each was attended by two doctors, who examined them, not sadly but with a sense of caring, for some 30 minutes before the show actually started.
Then, a chord in the music signaled the doctors to begin their transformation. They removed their medical coats to reveal jackets with angel’s wings on the backs. As snow started to fall, the angels slowly escorted their corpses, now sitting up and facing heaven — these women had died of broken hearts, you see — out of the theater.
And then came their fashionable friends, one by one, in their mourning attire: capes, coats, jackets and cardigans, skirts and dresses — in lace, cashmere, mohair, flannel, silk, satin and everything else you could think of, with intricately detailed embroidery and Browne’s impeccable tailoring, of course.
Browne is known for huge theatrical productions like this, and perhaps his best was his recent spring/summer collection, featuring a fairytale (by Browne) narrated by Diane Keaton
To die for, indeed.
— Jocelyn Noveck
Vera Wang’s world of black
Global fashion giant Vera Wang is known for a lot of things. Black clothes are one of them. So how does she keep the mainstay color fresh?
“I don’t think it’s challenging to make black contemporary,” Wang said Tuesday backstage after her show of mostly, you guessed it, black.
“I think there’s too much black in contemporary, and I love black. … but I think to make black look elevated is a much bigger challenge because there is so much black clothing, particularly for fall. So to try and create black on a more, you know, couture level of sewing and detailing, and that it be visible and representational of that level of sewing, is a challenge. No question.”
She wasn’t the only designer to lean heavily on black. Browne and Alexander Wang went to the dark side as well.
Vera’s world of black included an oversized cashmere fisherman’s sweater, a cotton men’s shirt with big felted wool sleeves and silver sequins, and a vinyl wrap miniskirt with black sequin flowers.
— Leanne Italie, Nicole Evatt
Zac Posen hearts Naomi Campbell
What does a runway queen wear? A ruby glitter ballgown, of course. Naomi Campbell had Zac Posen’s crowd collectively uttering that fashion word of all words — wow — when she closed his show in a flocked taffeta bustier number against the grandeur of Vanderbilt Hall in Grand Central Terminal.
Compared to a sea of muted grays, blues and blacks on other runways, Posen’s show of color was a welcome sight. It included a range of reds, emerald green, plum, burnt orange and sparkly disco silver in a column gown in bugle beads. —Leanne Italie
