Five feel good moments from NYFW 2024
Featuring muscles, bubble wrap and Beyoncé’s nephew
Featuring muscles, bubble wrap and Beyoncé’s nephew
Fashion can be a particularly cruel mistress. And no one is more privy to her moods than designers, their teams and of course, The Assistants. Packed schedules, gruelling deadlines and a strange configuration of social engagements in the lead-up to fashion month all mean a calendar that simply won’t stop. And yet! For the joy of witnessing something beautiful, fierce and occasionally confusing, we just can’t look away (and also… because it’s a multi-million-pound industry that demands attention). So while certain corners of the internet insisted on bringing the Lululemon leggings-versus-Chloë Sevigny discourse into February, elsewhere in The Big Apple, New York Fashion Week arrived.
One of the city’s foremost creative icons now for four decades, Marc Jacobs marked his 40th anniversary with a bold campaign ahead of the official schedule, featuring some of his nearest and dearest: Sofia Coppola, Pharrell, and Vaquera designers Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee. His 2024 collection, meanwhile, was all big hair, big eyes and clothes seemingly made for a paper doll.
By Sunday, New York’s sartorial limelight was temporarily transferred to Las Vegas for the Taylor & Travis show – sorry, the Super Bowl (shoutout to Off-White’s custom crystal costumes for Usher, tbh), before the whole thing concluded with a bang, courtesy of supers Debra Shaw and Kristin McMenamy, at Thom Browne on Valentine’s day. Missed the in-between? Catch up with five of our favourite feel good moments from the first of the Big Four…
Since launching his namesake label in 2015, Willy Chavarria’s clothes have exuded a confident sense of self. And it’s paid off – he won Menswear Designer of the Year at last year’s CFDA awards. For AW24 the Mexican-American designer introduced his first short, a film with a glittering cast (Paloma Elsesser, Kai-Isaiah Jamal) that played in a chapel before its key players appeared IRL. The title, Safe From Harm, nodded to themes of love and protection – key markers of the season so far, and ideas arrived in the form of jackets, from blazers with defined shoulders to leather bombers and more casual sports numbers. That theme of safety came through via a feeling of community, or family, with Chavarria’s cool marriage of smart and casual providing the perfect uniform.
Muscles, sweat and new notions of strength were the ideas on show at Collina Strada this season, where lyrics lifted from Britney Spears’s 2000 hit ‘Stronger’ could be heard overhead. It was the name of the collection, too. Several models carried dumbbells bookended by squashes, while elsewhere a series of dresses, tops and jackets boasted puff-shaped sleeves, mirroring muscles. Designer Hillary Taymour announced the collection on Instagram with a sweat-stained ‘Collina’s Gym’ jumper, but the real power lay in her understanding of femininity. The prints, textures and silhouettes on display all pointed to strong women, and her interpretation of what that actually means.
A part of the fabric of the city since the early ‘90s, this season marked Tommy Hilfiger’s return to New York after deviating for the past few years. He took over quite the institution for the Friday night announcement – the Oyster Bar at Grand Central Station. Under the cavernous tiled arches of the century-old establishment, Hilfiger’s AW24 collection was a love letter to New York, in which the designer sampled the best of ‘Classic American Cool’. A co-ed production (something NY’s designers have long been spearheading), there was plenty for fans of red, white and blue to indulge in here, however the iconic palette was reclaimed with a certain softness and coupled with camel, black and green.
A lot of catwalk debuts could be considered Something Of A Big Deal™. But when your aunt is Beyoncé and she’s recently dropped the promos for a new era, the statement is no exaggeration. As so happened for Julez Smith Jr., Solange’s 19 year-old son who just walked Luar’s AW24 show. Perhaps best known for their Ana bags of the acclaimed keyhole silhouette (for reference, see Bey gripping her oversized iridescent edition on the frow), Raul Lopez’s label this season unfolded largely with a collection of leather pieces in heighted proportions. A riff on the queerbaiting discourse that continues to circle menswear, Lopez’s exaggerated necklines and oversized shoulders were firmly for everyone.
Renowned since the ‘90s for engineering a standout aesthetic that clashed with the era’s earlier opulence, Helmut Lang’s house codes have since continued to sway towards the more understated. In his second collection for the brand, Peter Do retraced this lineage via a ‘bulletproof’ vest and a largely subdued palette (plus added pops of red and orange). In the show notes, the designer spoke about armour and adornment – “the way we dress is the way we equip ourselves. The way we equip ourselves is the way we protect ourselves” – and this was best executed in a series of bubble wrap-esque pieces: great transparent shirts and trousers that took on the protective qualities usually reserved for our fav objects. In this instance? Very fun clothes.
Since launching his namesake label in 2015, Willy Chavarria’s clothes have exuded a confident sense of self. And it’s paid off – he won Menswear Designer of the Year at last year’s CFDA awards. For AW24 the Mexican-American designer introduced his first short, a film with a glittering cast (Paloma Elsesser, Kai-Isaiah Jamal) that played in a chapel before its key players appeared IRL. The title, Safe From Harm, nodded to themes of love and protection – key markers of the season so far, and ideas arrived in the form of jackets, from blazers with defined shoulders to leather bombers and more casual sports numbers. That theme of safety came through via a feeling of community, or family, with Chavarria’s cool marriage of smart and casual providing the perfect uniform.
Muscles, sweat and new notions of strength were the ideas on show at Collina Strada this season, where lyrics lifted from Britney Spears’s 2000 hit ‘Stronger’ could be heard overhead. It was the name of the collection, too. Several models carried dumbbells bookended by squashes, while elsewhere a series of dresses, tops and jackets boasted puff-shaped sleeves, mirroring muscles. Designer Hillary Taymour announced the collection on Instagram with a sweat-stained ‘Collina’s Gym’ jumper, but the real power lay in her understanding of femininity. The prints, textures and silhouettes on display all pointed to strong women, and her interpretation of what that actually means.
A part of the fabric of the city since the early ‘90s, this season marked Tommy Hilfiger’s return to New York after deviating for the past few years. He took over quite the institution for the Friday night announcement – the Oyster Bar at Grand Central Station. Under the cavernous tiled arches of the century-old establishment, Hilfiger’s AW24 collection was a love letter to New York, in which the designer sampled the best of ‘Classic American Cool’. A co-ed production (something NY’s designers have long been spearheading), there was plenty for fans of red, white and blue to indulge in here, however the iconic palette was reclaimed with a certain softness and coupled with camel, black and green.
A lot of catwalk debuts could be considered Something Of A Big Deal™. But when your aunt is Beyoncé and she’s recently dropped the promos for a new era, the statement is no exaggeration. As so happened for Julez Smith Jr., Solange’s 19 year-old son who just walked Luar’s AW24 show. Perhaps best known for their Ana bags of the acclaimed keyhole silhouette (for reference, see Bey gripping her oversized iridescent edition on the frow), Raul Lopez’s label this season unfolded largely with a collection of leather pieces in heighted proportions. A riff on the queerbaiting discourse that continues to circle menswear, Lopez’s exaggerated necklines and oversized shoulders were firmly for everyone.
Renowned since the ‘90s for engineering a standout aesthetic that clashed with the era’s earlier opulence, Helmut Lang’s house codes have since continued to sway towards the more understated. In his second collection for the brand, Peter Do retraced this lineage via a ‘bulletproof’ vest and a largely subdued palette (plus added pops of red and orange). In the show notes, the designer spoke about armour and adornment – “the way we dress is the way we equip ourselves. The way we equip ourselves is the way we protect ourselves” – and this was best executed in a series of bubble wrap-esque pieces: great transparent shirts and trousers that took on the protective qualities usually reserved for our fav objects. In this instance? Very fun clothes.
Latest
