Photos: Courtesy of Attersee; Colleen Allen; Emily Dawn Long

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

Sharing its name with the French term for the liminal moment linking late afternoon and early evening, Cinq à Sept brings the intriguing tension between day and night to an advanced contemporary collection.

Inspired by the hours between 5 and 7 p.m., when city streets are awash in the warm glow of the vanishing sun and office desks are abandoned for cocktails and as-yet unknown possibilities, Cinq à Sept embodies a deliberate balance between sophistication and ease, youthful daring, and confident allure.

In New York, almost everyone who can put on a fashion show ends up doing so. But that doesn’t mean they should. I’m increasingly exhausted by the proliferation of runways featuring nice-enough clothes that would be better shown in a… showroom. Or, as the talented Maria McManus endeavored with her collection, in a gallery owned by her neighbor.

Of course, McManus has done runway shows before, but her clothes don’t typically warrant them. That’s not a dig. Fashion shows today are bespoke marketing tactics—the domain of multibillion-dollar brands or rebellious upstarts. Every business in the middle, where most of the New York companies reside, basically suffers from this whole exercise.

A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR

Sharing its name with the French term for the liminal moment linking late afternoon and early evening, Cinq à Sept brings the intriguing tension between day and night to an advanced contemporary collection.

Inspired by the hours between 5 and 7 p.m., when city streets are awash in the warm glow of the vanishing sun and office desks are abandoned for cocktails and as-yet unknown possibilities, Cinq à Sept embodies a deliberate balance between sophistication and ease, youthful daring, and confident allure.

On Thursday, down on 11th Street, I got to see McManus’s collection up close. It was one of the best of the week. The lineup’s most magnetizing look was a black bouclé skirt suit, one of the chicest takes on the Chanel-ification (or the Matthieu-ification) that I saw during my time in town. The other was at Carolina Herrera, where Wes Gordon nailed just about everything: the vibe (1980s opulence with modern restraint, vis-à-vis blazers with heart buttons), the casting (a string of famous women artists, including Amy Sherald and Rachel Feinstein), and the music (Laurie Anderson, Kim Carnes, The Pointer Sisters).

Photos: Courtesy of Maria McManus; Carolina Herrera; Michael Kors

It made me think about wearing Herrera, and also that Gordon could do a lot with a bigger ready-to-wear brand. Maybe Michael Kors when the master retires? (For what it’s worth, Kors’s 45th anniversary show at Lincoln Center was pretty damn fabulous, with all the elegance and extravagance we desire from him. I loved the leather opera gloves.)

Anyway, succession thoughts are always in the air. There were plenty of opportunities to play Fantasy Designer Draft this week, like imagining Joseph Altuzarra at Ralph Lauren. Perhaps that’s unexpected, but if you know Joseph’s work, you can see it. At his very nice show on Saturday, the swirling silhouette and bubble studs on shoes and bags reminded me that Altuzarra, who grew up in Paris, would also make a very formidable candidate to replace Pieter Mulier at Alaïa.

There is a lot of chatter about Maximilian Davis heading there as the Sabato De Sarno-to-Ferragamo speculation ramps up, but I wonder if they will take a beat and let the studio manage things for a while. After all, fashion is an afterthought at Richemont, and it might not be worth rushing things if they can hold off for a season or two and find the right next person. (Of all the names that have been floated, Clare Waight Keller feels most pragmatic, if uninspired.)

Photos: Courtesy of Altuzarra; Eckhaus Latta; Calvin Klein

Hmm, who else? The Eckhaus Latta kids (who aren’t kids anymore, really) could do Helmut Lang, yes, but we’re all just hoping Fast Retailing comes to its senses and stops trying to make Helmut Lang happen. (I am sure Helmut Lang, the person, would also like them to stop.) Anyway, Eckhaus Latta and a few others are always worth seeing on the runway. What separates Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta from their peers? Real skill and deftness.

Eckhaus Latta is also regularly sucked into the “Who should really be designing Calvin Klein?” narrative. (McManus came up in the conversation this season too, given that her collection was very 1990s, if not very Calvin.) But Calvin is another brand that needs to just stop the runway. The infrastructure is not there. (See: the Raf Simons era for proof that good collections do not equal an easy business.) So, does it actually matter if Calvin designer Veronica Leoni’s latest collection was good or bad? It was a much more straightforward idea, whether you liked what she sent down the runway or not. I give a lot of credit to uber-runway stylist Marie Chaix, who cleared out the cobwebs and made it feel like a linear collection rather than a mishmash of ideas. (I clocked the all-white look with white-on-white striped jeans.) However, after the show, a smart friend reminded me that this sort of “It’s an improvement!” attitude never goes anywhere. Each season, we’d give Sabato De Sarno the benefit of the doubt, and look where that got him. Well, actually, he seems to have a new job, so…

On a more optimistic note, Daniella Kallmeyer is making beautiful clothes. The quality of the materials was visible on the runway, and I’m sure looked even better up close. I enjoyed Anna Sui’s show, where her designer friends, Marc Jacobs and Coach’s Stuart Vevers, came out to cheer her on at the National Arts Club. In Sui’s case, the runway show is in service of the fragrance and beauty license, which justifies the effort. Also, who else is showing leopard-print twinsets and purple florals? Sui is one of a kind.

Photos: Courtesy of Kallmeyer; Anna Sui; Tory Burch

Another one-off is Tory Burch, who is currently at the peak of her powers. This collection, inspired in part by her dad, in part by Bunny Mellon, was more relaxed and—dare I say—commercial. The weirdness came in the form of texture and color. (Red fuzz against crackly brown shine, etcetera.)

Tory is at the stage in her career where she feels irreplaceable. Also seemingly irreplaceable: Loewe designers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, whose own brand, Proenza Schouler, is now designed by Rachel Scott, founder of Diotima. Scott is a talented designer, but this first runway show was unsuccessful: The colors were off, the silhouettes unmemorable. It also threw into relief how elite McCollough and Hernandez really are, and that it’s almost impossible to turn out two excellent runway collections. (Diotima, which I missed because I was on a plane back home, was much stronger, at least according to the pictures.)

I hope for Scott, and the rest of the Proenza Schouler team, that her collection is received well commercially, but I just don’t think she’s the right fit for that house. One couldn’t help wondering if Ashlynn Park, who showed her own line on Thursday, would be better suited to lead the brand. Her sensibility is closer to the original. I want her to push her own designs forward a bit, though. I’m impatient.

Photos: Courtesy of Diotima; Lii; TWP

Of the young designers in New York, I’m probably most interested in Zane Li, whose line, Lii, styled by fashion insider (and Li’s husband) Jason Rider, deviates from the rest; it’s quite tactile and athletic, whereas much of the city’s young labels are about a certain softness and romanticism. I hope he starts to deliver on all that promise.

If you’re going to indulge a brand that shouldn’t really do a runway show by gracing them with your presence, I would suggest TWP. It’s elegant, and Trish Wescoat Pound always casts great models. Todd Snyder, who decided to opt out of showing this season, is sort of the male equivalent in terms of the kind of value they bring to the industry and clients alike.

You could feel the money at Khaite, where designer Catherine Holstein’s husband and frequent collaborator, the architect Griffin Frazen, built a giant electronic installation that looked sort of like a train departure board and read, “Now you are here? Here you are now.” As Raquel Zimmermann opened the show, the grid jumbled into random letters, emerging as “What makes something real,” and ending with, “Release me.” The extravagance was, in some ways, a nod to the big-time shows that Marc Jacobs used to hold in the same Armory on Park Avenue. (Jacobs returned there this season, but the set these days is reduced to the bare minimum.)

I often see Jacobs in Holstein’s work, if only in a color (a certain lavender) or a material (organza) or a shape (a boxy nod to Yves Saint Laurent), which made it a nice spiritual bookend to the week. Jacobs and Holstein are opposites in most ways: She’s a product designer, he’s conceptual; she was the C.E.O. of her company for many years, he’d never entertain such a prospect; she likes to talk about her inspiration, he rarely offers an explanation. After the show, Holstein talked about how fashion is a commodity product; Jacobs might be depressed by that notion. But they both know who they are and why they deserve to be here, and can convince their audience as much. That’s more than most are capable of in this city, where the cultural and financial decline of the traditional fashion industry is so clearly on display.

No reading list today. Watch Love Story and tell me what you think, instead.

Until tomorrow,
Lauren

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