Designers show off for NYC Fashion Week
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- The latest fashion from Christian Siriano is modeled during Fashion Week, Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2021, in New York. (Bebeto Matthews, Associated Press)
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- The latest fashion from Christian Siriano is modeled during New York’s Fashion Week, Tuesday, Sept. 7, 2021. (Bebeto Matthews, Associated Press)
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- The Moschino collection is modeled during New York Fashion Week, Thursday, Sept. 9, 2021. (Mary Altaffer, Associated Press)
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- The Moschino collection is modeled during New York Fashion Week, Thursday, Sept. 9, 2021. (Mary Altaffer, Associated Press)
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- Models walk the runway at the Prabal Gurung spring/summer 2022 fashion show at 20 Battery Place during New York Fashion Week on Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2021. (Evan Agostini, Invision via AP)
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- A model walks the runway at the Prabal Gurung spring/summer 2022 fashion show at 20 Battery Place during New York Fashion Week on Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2021. (Evan Agostini, Invision via AP)
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- The latest fashion from Proenza Schouler is modeled during New York’s Fashion Week, Wednesday, Sept. 8, 2021. (Bebeto Matthews, Associated Press)
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- The latest fashion from Proenza Schouler is modeled during New York’s Fashion Week, Wednesday Sept. 8, 2021. (Bebeto Matthews, Associated Press)
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- The LaQuan Smith collection is modeled at the Empire State Building during New York Fashion Week on Thursday, Sept. 9, 2021, in New York. (Charles Sykes, Invision via AP)
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- The LaQuan Smith collection is modeled at the Empire State Building during New York Fashion Week on Thursday, Sept. 9, 2021, in New York. (Charles Sykes, Invision via AP)
Christian Siriano kicks off New York Fashion Week in color
NEW YORK — With Katie Holmes and Lil’ Kim on his front row and singer Marina on the mic high above his runway, Christian Siriano helped kicked off New York Fashion Week’s first big pandemic round of in-person shows Tuesday with a flurry of neon and lace inspired in part by all the Italian women in his life.
From ornate Gotham Hall, beneath a stained glass skylight 70 feet up, Siriano’s commitment to size inclusivity was never stronger as he opened and closed the show with plus-size breakout model Precious Lee. She first walked in a stunning yellow trouser suit with wide loose pants and an asymmetrical jacket, a matching crossover bralette underneath.
His crowd pared down to 300 from his usual 800 guests due to the pandemic, Siriano told The Associated Press he wanted to bring the glamour in today’s dark times. He harkened back in some looks to old photographs of his paternal grandmother on vacation in Positano on Italy’s Amalfi Coast during the 1960s and ’70s. He put vintage sunglasses on some of his models as they strutted in bright yellows, sunset oranges and emerald green gowns and dresses with huge ruffles for sleeves and bulbous skirts.
“Fashion Week is back. It’s such a good feeling. New York is feeling great,” Siriano said, with Kristin Chenoweth, Alicia Silverstone and muse Coco Rocha also on his front row.
The pandemic, he said, has brought on bouts of nostalgia for many, including himself. He recalled an apricot dress with polkadots among his grandmother’s favorites.
“She’s still alive at 101,” Siriano said. “I was just feeling that and it has the glamour that I love. I was surrounded by women who got dressed every day. It was lipstick. It was hair and makeup every day.”
He wanted this spring-summer collection to be “very strong and powerful,” but sexy, too.
There were looks in barely there black lace, tiny bra tops paired with trousers and full skirts, and body hugging slinky dresses with cut outs from neck to calf. As Marina sang from a platform at the end of the runway, models of all sizes also walked in classic evening looks in black and white, including one-shoulder dresses with a single long sleeve and a slice of bared midriff. Other looks were adorned with vertical rows of feathers.
“I love that. I miss that,” he said of his touch of drama and old-world glam. “I think that’s what people miss about fashion, too. We have friends that are going to, like, a birthday party and they want a gown. It’s so interesting to see what we were missing.”
Fashion, Siriano said, “is in a really hard place” at the moment.
“Business is really struggling everywhere. It’s nowhere near what people used to shop. But luckily, for our world, people really are looking for that aspirational piece. They’re spending more than ever on that. My best friend just got married. She canceled her wedding three times. I made her the biggest dress I could possibly make her. She wanted it. She’s a curvy girl, and pregnant, and she was like, I don’t care.”
Puppies, giraffes and bears — Oh My! — on Moschino runway
It was a soggy, gray day in Manhattan, but Moschino had the antidote: a burst of color and whimsy filling a runway in midtown’s Bryant Park.
Jeremy Scott, the fertile mind behind the Italian luxury label, filled his New York Fashion Week collection with bright baby blues, pastel pinks and greens and purples, and brilliant yellows — fitting for a show inspired by children’s toys and cartoon animals.
Also fitting: supermodel Gigi Hadid, a new mom herself, toting along an oversized baby bottle as she closed Thursday’s show in a one-armed gown featuring a pink elephant’s trunk running down from her shoulder.
It was a much-buzzed about showing for Moschino at New York Fashion Week; the label usually shows in Milan, though Scott has long presented his own namesake label in New York. His Moschino creations are often the most buzzed-about outfits at the Met Gala, which this year comes at the end of Fashion Week — think Katy Perry as a cheeseburger.
Hadid, a longtime Scott collaborator, opened the show with a baby blue three-piece suit — miniskirt, bustier and jacket — adorned with a motif of pink elephants and other whimsical animals, with a chunky necklace around her neck bearing letters that spelled “MOSCHINO.”
The dozens of outfits to come hewed to the same concept — women in baby-themed dresses and suits, adorned with safety-pin earrings or teething rings, with whimsical matching handbags and gloves. There were glasses with heart-shaped lenses and slouchy belts that looked like giant little-girl charm bracelets. There was even a baby mobile, as headdress.
A neon yellow shift dress was festooned with blue teddy bears and yellow daisies. There were playful plaids, all in shades that would be perfect in a nursery. Prints included giraffes and puppies and kitties and little lambs. One skirt was emblazoned with a huge duck. There also was, it seemed, a spotted kangaroo.
There were long gowns, too — one featuring a huge bunny rabbit with giant ears growing out of the bodice. Perhaps most spectacular was Hadid’s, with that long elephant trunk, and her bottle accessory, which she seemed to bite playfully as she strutted.
“The colors were really popping,” noted celebrity guest Megan Fox, who was seated in the front row, as was Taraji P. Henson.
Of all the accessories, perhaps the sweetest was a small child’s beach pail serving as a handbag — and harking back to the fast-fading summer, which seemed even more distant amid all the soggy umbrellas in Bryant Park.
Prabal Gurung’s fashion show asks: Who gets to be a woman?
NEW YORK — New York’s first female governor. American Girl dolls. The Statue of Liberty.
Prabal Gurung celebrated all things woman Wednesday night on the runway and off at his New York Fashion Week show along the downtown waterfront. He summed up his inspiration thusly with a quote borrowed from the Pulitzer Prize-winning fashion and culture critic Robin Givhan:
“To be girlish is to be powerful, because power is redefined.”
Whether Gurung achieved that goal in his spring-summer mix of sporty dresses, loose trouser looks and elegant evening wear is up to interpretation, but he’s been thinking a lot about the fundamental questions in today’s culture wars over inclusivity, diversity, justice, femininity, beauty and ownership of women’s bodies.
“Who gets to be all of it or none of it? Who gets to be a girl. In today’s world, the maternal matriarchal energy is much more needed than ever,” he told The Associated Press from Robert F. Wagner Jr. Park on New York Harbor, with Lady Liberty as his backdrop.
America, he said, “has always been a woman but hasn’t always been treated beautifully.” New York is also a woman, Gurung said, as is new Gov. Kathy Hochul, who took the job last month after Andrew Cuomo’s sexual harassment scandal and sat in the designer’s audience with Amelia Hamlin, Huma Abedin and Maye Musk, the model mother of Elon.
“I’m a storyteller, you know, and I tell different kinds of stories. And as a storyteller, I’m a healer. Through stories you can connect people. You see people. And that’s what fashion is. Fashion allows people to be seen, stories to be told and the joy and the optimism that comes with it,” he said.
This particular story follows Gurung’s 10th anniversary show two years ago in which he put models in beauty pageant sashes that read, “Who gets to be American?” He used highlighter yellow tulle, bubble dresses and electric green trucker jackets to tell his tale this time around.
Gurung showed dressmaker button detailing alongside feathery and slinky looks. There were tea dresses and undyed denim trousers and wrap mini dresses. And he did it in collaboration with Mattel’s American Girl, one of his show sponsors.
The doll brand is launching a limited edition T-shirt for both girls and their dolls emblazoned in multicolored letters with: “Stronger in Colour.” Some of his guests held custom American Girl dolls in celebration of “all the limitless possibilities,” according to a statement sent to media ahead of the show.
Had Gurung known what an American Girl doll was prior to the pairing?
“No, I didn’t, to be completely honest,” he acknowledged.
No matter. Gurung is a proven fierce advocate and ally — for people of color, for immigrants, for non-binary people, for women. He concluded: “I wanted to create a world where people tonight would feel that different kinds of beauty exist somewhere.”
Against a stunning river sunset, Proenza Schouler returns
NEW YORK– Sailboats wafted by on the Hudson River and the setting sun sparkled on the water as Proenza Schouler celebrated a return to in-person fashion shows against the spectacular setting of New York’s buzziest waterfront locale, Little Island.
Designers Lazaro Hernandez and Jack McCollough were so delighted with Wednesday’s show, held in perfect late summer weather, that they shared a high-five and a kiss as they ran out for their bow in the new park’s amphitheater facing the water — surely one of the city’s premier views.
The show, which featured an appearance by vice presidential stepdaughter Ella Emhoff — who also appeared in the label’s digital February show — was timed precisely to the sunset at 7:15 p.m. That gave the designers a dramatic darkening sky as they presented a collection meant to celebrate a return not only to city life but to the ideas of travel and adventure.
“We wanted to capture this newfound freedom that we have, still slightly fragile at times,” McCollough said in a backstage interview after the show.
Hernandez noted that the two designers had developed the idea during their own travels, which began in April after nearly a year in lockdown. They visited islands both in Hawaii and in the Mediterranean, he said.
“This is life, this is living, this is what we all want to be doing,” he said of the show’s ethos. “Just that idea of expedition and travel and exploration. That’s what we do as humans — we want to learn more.”
The clothes were a mix of utilitarian black and bold yellow, red and orange. The brilliant colors, the designers said, were meant to suggest “a psychological tonic to recent times,” as well as a metaphorical turning of the page to a new chapter. Three colorful dresses in particular, in gauze jersey, pointed to “a life that is free to step out once again,” the duo wrote in their show notes.
Fringe on a number of garments was “a celebration of the handmade,’ they said. As for shoes, they were often flat and comfortable, recognizing “the reality of comfort being paramount today.”
Emhoff, stepdaughter of Vice President Kamala Harris, wore a poncho-like black coat, her hair pulled tightly back in a single braid. The model-designer, who graduated as an art major from the Parsons School of Design in May, also appeared in the label’s February collection, presented as a digital film.
The 2.4 acre Little Island park, which sits atop a series of columns shaped like tulips, opened in May, a jewel within the larger Hudson River Park. McCollough noted that with each Fashion Week, it had gotten “harder and harder to find new venues that have never been used before.”
LaQuan Smith throws a fashion party at Empire State Building
NEW YORK — Where the party girls at? On Thursday night, some were on top of the Empire State Building walking LaQuan Smith’s New York Fashion Week runway in slinky blue and white sequin minis, barely there one pieces and shiny body hugging pants.
In his first see now, buy now show, the designer hosted about 200 guests on the landmark’s famous Observation Deck with sweeping cityscape views as the wind tried to make away with one of his model’s huge black hats.
“This building is a true representation of New York City dreams,” Smith told The Associated Press before his evening show. “Me being a New York native, I have vivid memories of coming here as a kid. It’s a full circle moment.”
And he meant that literally, sending his models all around the deck to an explicit soundtrack that screamed it’s time to party.
“I’m really excited to reinforce what it means to be unapologetically sexy. I’m ready to start getting people out there again,” Smith said.
Kylie Jenner was out there. She showed up in her first public appearance since revealing her pregnancy with baby No. 2 in a custom Smith catsuit that put her growing belly on display under lace from neck to ankle.
On the runway, his models — including standout Winnie Harlow — were dressed to let loose. Two walked in bright white with large matching poodles. Others carried mini Champagne bottles. One slightly cold-looking model showed off a bedazzled blue bikini. Smith allowed her a white open robe.
Before making their way to the top, the designer hosted a cocktail party in the landmark’s lobby.
At 33, Smith has been building his sultry, luxe brand after launching in 2013, drawing some major celebrity fans who include Beyoncé, Lady Gaga and Rihanna. Hailey Bieber (accompanied by hubby Justin) wore Smith’s wool halter dress while meeting French President Emmanuel Macron and his wife, Brigitte Macron, in June.
His heart remains in New York City, where fashion is everywhere and everything.
“It’s in the subway, it’s in the streets, it’s in the bars, the nightlife,” Smith said. “New York in itself is a fashion moment. It’s a fashion movie, from the high end to the low tier.”
For this collection, fashion came in electric blues, sequined whites and fishnet stockings worn with itty bitty bottoms and tiny tops. Necklines plunged. Cutaways were strategically placed at the hip and belly, and feathery jackets blew in the breeze.
Smith carried an edgy black-and-white print into a grouping of looks that included a slit skirt below the knee with a matching bra top. He put a hood on a slinky sequined long-sleeve mini that exposed a matching bra. Other models seemed ready for bed, or at least ready to hit the sack. One wore a ruffly, lacy lingerie look in a soft blue.
On the 20th anniversary of 9/11, Smith shared that his mother had worked for an insurance company at the World Trade Center. She was on maternity leave after his younger brother was born when the towers fell.
“It was just a devastating time,” he said. “But I think we have to continue to find reasons to celebrate and honor the ones that we’ve lost.”