New York fashion is throwing its weight behind the return of New
York City.
Just one week after the
Metropolitan Museum of Art announced
that its next big costume show would be devoted to American designers,
Michael Kors held an actual show — one marking 40 years in business — using 45th Street
as a runway, the lights of Broadway as a backdrop and a cast of supermodels
past and present to make a bet on the future of the metropolis in double-face
cashmere and crystals.
اضافة اعلان
Forget “The Bonfire of the Vanities.” Get ready for “the bonfire
of the sweatpants.”
“The other day we were at Balthazar for dinner again,” Kors said
in a socially distant one-on-one presentation the day before the video bowed,
“and just walking to the bathroom was an event! We’ve been missing that
head-turning moment. But I think the ‘entrance’ is going to return.”
To that end, his show was not just a show, but also a public
service announcement for the theater community (Kors is a famous theater buff,
attending an average of three shows a week in pre-pandemic times) and a
statement of belief in the allure of perfectly polished power sportswear.
It began at Sardi’s, the classic theater eatery, where the
cartoon portraits of stars including
Bette Midler,
Billy Porter,
Debra Messing and
Matt Bomer suddenly came to life and started bickering, riffing, praising
Kors and chatting up the Actors Fund, which has been focused on helping the
less heralded denizens of the theater survive during the pandemic closures.
Then
Shalom Harlow exited the restaurant in a white tuxedo
jacket, black shirt and black trousers, began to sashay down the middle of the
street, and a parade of greatest hits began.
As Rufus Wainwright crooned “City Lights” and “New York State of
Mind” on the stage of the Shubert Theater, out came luscious camel halter-necks
and ivory body-conscious knits; windowpane-check miniskirt suits, giant zebra
sheepskin parkas and boss lady suiting. Kors has always had the ability to make
an apparently simple garment — a knee-length skirt slit up each thigh just so,
a jacket tossed over a shoulder — look ineffably expensive (it’s his
superpower), and that skill was on full display.
Indeed, 16 looks from the archives were remade as part of the
collection, including a lipstick-red patent leather car coat originally worn by
Cindy Crawford in 1991, now modeled by
Bella Hadid atop a matching red
turtleneck sweater dress. It all culminated in gold and silver mirrored T-shirt
dresses and tank gowns; posh puffers lined in faux fur and sequins; and a gray
flannel tailored jumpsuit pinstriped with Swarovski crystals.
You want to know what people are going to wear to the Met Gala
come September? Here’s your answer.
And Kors was not the only designer getting ready for The Return.
In London,
Riccardo Tisci presented his first solo women’s collection for
Burberry (since he joined the brand in 2018, he has always shown menswear and
womenswear together) in the environs of the brand’s Regent Street flagship. It
was sort of a statement of belief in the potential of shopping: We will go out
to browse again!
And when we do, what will we see?
“I believe after lockdown we all want to dream,” the designer
said, speaking via videoconference from Italy, where he was visiting his
92-year-old mother. “But dressed up doesn’t have to mean uncomfortable.”
That meant a spoken word performance by British rapper and DJ
Shygirl, wearing a flesh-toned bodysuit and musing on “Mother Nature.” It meant
graphic color-block silk dresses inspired by deconstructed flags (national,
heraldic, you name it) and jigsawed together in asymmetric patterns and layers;
chubby faux fur coats dangling fat rabbit’s-ear fringe at the hem; narrow
tailoring with an added panel, like a cape, at the back; fringed leather and
jersey covered in small hammered-gold discs, like very sinuous armor.
Despite some inexplicable flaps on trenchcoat lapels and trouser
hems — seriously, what is it with the flaps? — the result was a tighter, more
streamlined presentation than Tisci has given for the brand. Less mired in
British heritage and the desire to be all things for all people, and more like
what you might want to wear to a futuristic jousting tourney.
Well, that could be what city streets look like next.
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