Text by Adam Lehrer

As the fashion industry makes its trek across the Atlantic for womenswear shows in Europe, I think it’s time we start acknowledging the fact that there is something striking going on within New York fashion. While the common notion that New York is eternally more commercial than London or Paris is still true, it is starting to appear like that won’t always be the case. While there are still your Diane Von Fursternberg’s and Vera Wang’s and Ralph Lauren’s doing their wildly accessible products (and doing them well, of course), there is a real undercurrent of subversion going on at New York Fashion Week that is hard to deny. People often forget that someone like Marc Jacobs was at one point strikingly against the grain, and it feels like there are new designers in town picking up that mantle. This season, brands such as Rodarte, Eckhaus Latta, Moses Gauntlett Cheng, Creatures of Comfort, and more offered radical interpretations and presentations of the ways in which they believe that women should dress today. Less we forget the success of a brand like Hood By Air, which finds itself in a transitional phase after the health goth (whatever the fuck that was) craze dies down. Even big designers like Jeremy Scott present beauty and humor in equal dosage. All this tension (not to mention champagne and illegal drugs) between high concept fashion and big dollar fashion makes New York Fashion Week all the more fun.

What really separates New York’s younger conceptual brands from those in Paris is a sense of humor. Eckhaus Latta, which was just named to the Forbes 30 under 30, for instance very much comes off as a brand figuring it out as they go along and creating a never-ending party for their friends. Sure, something like Vetements can seem fun too, but it’s hard to imagine Rei Kawakubo cracking a smile to a joke she let slip in to a couture dress. Fashion is kind of silly at the end of the day. I mean, it is just clothes. Yes, it can be fun and interesting to critique these collections and identify the various cultural references within them, but they are still just very expensive things you put on your body, or don’t. New York designers seem to get that.

MARC JACOBS

When Marc Jacobs is at his best, Marc Jacobs is the best, period. FW 2016 felt like a return-to-form for Marc. It was all goth glamour and a macabre taste of the whimsical. Beautiful but not self-serious. Decadent but not opulent. Marc doesn’t seem to care about pushing fashion towards any future, as if we could actually define what that might be. He just wants to make excellent Marc Jacobs collections. This was one with the crazy huge platform shoes, concert sweatshirts paired with dollies, coats with useless but wonderful belt straps, and dresses oversized to bejesus and undersized to hell. Those dresses came glitzed up with spooky cat graphics, and pants suits came in black and white polka dots while shaped in the most subversive of cuts. Maybe some will say that Marc caught the Vetements but with the massive silhouettes, but subversive shapes have been Marc’s specialty since he turned Perry Eliis into a cool grunge brand. The soundtrack, silence sparsely interrupted by chimes recorded by Japanese free improv icon Keiji Haino, made for an utterly haunting collection. The Lady Gaga stunt casting didn’t even matter after the first look. Too cool.

THOM BROWNE

I really dig how Thom Browne’s man and woman dress pretty much the same. He might be the one designer who does weirder looks for his girls than guys, basically because his slightly strange power suits look more suitably odd on a woman. Odd, but awesome, I should add. Recreating Washington Square Park in the 1920s, or something, the collection found the women walking through a wooded lane wearing tweed, wool, and jacquard suits sliced up, sewn together, and re-appropriated for the uber confident alpha female. There was a tornado effect running through the clothes, and some things made absolute no sense. The usual Thom Browne customer is utterly well put together, so I don’t know id a dress or suit made of a dozen different patterns is going to have much market power. But does Thom Browne seem like a label that is financially strapped? Hardly. The shoes with the stripe logo will keep his fantasies alive for seasons to come. 

RODARTE

Rodarte is always quite amazing, but Laura and Kate Mulleavy really tapped into the ethos of the brand with the FW 2016 collection. The sense of subversive is in the ideas, celebrating femininity while incorporating leftist political ideals and never shying away from intellectual thought processes. With a non-flame retardant set designed by French furniture designer Alexandre de Betak, the Mulleavy’s tapped into the heyday of cultural importance of their Alma Mater: Berkeley in the 1960s. Was that so easy to pick up on? Aside from the Judy Collins covers of Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell, maybe not so much. But the clothes were magic. The multi-colored furs, the leather pieces, the white coat/dress hybrid, and all those jet-black pieces found the models looking independent and hot. If I could pick my girlfriend’s clothes, they’d probably all look like this.

CREATURES OF THE WIND

Creatures of the Wind: first of all, great name! It sounds like a latter day new wave band that could have opened up for Flock of Seagulls or something. Second, the clothes are nice and subdued, but not at all lacking quirk. It actually reminds me of prime ‘90s Jil Sander with its tapping into the garb of New York gallery women (Tavi Gevinson is a fan, after all). Designers Shane Gabier and Chris Peters aren’t re-inventing the wheel, but instead seem keen on tapping into historical notions of modernity: the clothes first mentality of Yves Saint Laurent, the retro color blocking of Miuccia Prada, maybe even some of the philosophies of Franco Moschino. Some of the looks are utterly simplistic, like a trench over a dress. But then you see a gorgeous Asian model with a brown printed halter-top, extravagant trousers, and pencil thin sweater wrapped around her neck. In a brutally crowded and commercial schedule, this new brand doesn’t seem intimidated to be anything other than what they want to be: a high fashion brand.

ECKHAUS LATTA

The little art-centric brand that absolutely fucking could and clearly does. The RISD alumni designers Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta were named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 this year. Considering where this brand comes from (the art world, etc.), I almost assumed that that kind of exposure might unravel what it stands for. Not so much, as evidenced by FW 2016. If anything, more eyes have only sharpened the brand’s identity. Still tapping into their inner artistes, they staged the show at MoMA PS1, with an eerie ambient soundscape provided by Richard Fellyd setting the vibe. The immediately obvious thing was a massive sharpening of tailoring and textile skills by the designers. While the deconstruction that they no doubt helped back to bring in vogue was there, they also were undoubtedly luxurious products. Performance artist Julianna Huxtable wore a golden chiffon dress, and gold appeared throughout the collection. A pink pantsuit came with shorts and all sorts of architectural embellishments. The men’s looks (the actual menswear looks not the men in dresses) were nice as well, especially a patch worked turtle neck sweater. Eckhaus Latta is defining the fashion of New York’s burgeoning under 30-art world, and that sense of taste making reverberates throughout the culture.

HOOD BY AIR

It’s pretty clear that HBA is in a transitional period. Health Goth, that born to die sub-culture, came and went and seemingly did the HBA logo from street style photos. But HBA has always been about so much more than rappers wearing their hoodies. They did after all popularize the gender bending that every designer has taken on in one-way or another. For FW 2016, Shayne Oliver went back to his queer club roots and delivered the best HBA collection in seasons. Whether it was Beyoncé’s Formation, the most talked about track of the moment, shaking the ground as the show soundtrack or the appearance of Russian LGBT artist Slava Mogutin wearing a leather puffer jacket, it appeared Oliver was utterly comfortable in his brand identity as well as his own. Gender politics, queer issues, racial tension, and the sociology of now were all heard loud and clear through the presentation. Though Oliver moved the brand to Milan, HBA is still firmly representative of modern day New York. The bucket hats (made with Kangol, awesome), rubber waders, Emperor Palpatine hooded robes, and exaggerated straight jackets were made for NYC radicals and attention seekers. HBA is made for HBA, and no one else.

PROENZA SCHOULER

Set within the almost mystical walls of the Whitney Museum, Jack McCullough and Lazaro Hernandez towed the lines of control and release with a collection of exaggerated silhouettes and tight lines and tailoring. Maybe due to the artist’s recent late-career retrospective at the museum, the designers cited Frank Stella as the primary influence on the collection. “We were looking at ways in which process informs the outcome,” said the duo to Vogue. That process was all about reconstruction, slashing the garments to bits and then putting them back together. Sweaters cut in half were tied back together with seams. A dress was slashed at the hip and at the shoulder, winking seduction. Proenza probably doesn’t get enough credit for their casual wear either: a leather trench coat with shearling collar, a red denim jacket recalls motocross, and a blazer looks re-imagined as a kimono. Everything luxurious.

PUBLIC SCHOOL

I have not always been mum in my criticism for the hype that surrounds Public School. To me, it always felt like the brand was just doing Yohji for a more commercial (New York) buyer. How many “high fashion for sneaker heads” brands do we need? But FW 2016 womenswear felt right. Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chow staged their show at the Hauser and Wirth gallery, formerly the Roxy nightclub. Appropriate, considering the designers were tapping into the pre-gentrification 1980s glory days of this eternally transitioning city. A lot of the clothes would look as good on dudes as women, particularly the massive mock-necked faux fur hoodie in hunter green and the suede bomber jackets. The post-apocalyptic thing in fashion isn’t exactly new (Rick and Raf were doing these things 15 years ago), but Osborne and Chow have a way of taking experimental shapes and making them effortless and extremely easy to wear. I’ve never been particularly drawn to Public School as a menswear brand, but their ideas on women seem to more clearly spell out a particularly customer: a disaffected, jaded, but deeply intelligent anti-fashionista. Or something like that.

ADAM SELMAN

I have not always been mum in my criticism for the hype that surrounds Public School. To me, it always felt like the brand was just doing Yohji for a more commercial (New York) buyer. How many “high fashion for sneaker heads” brands do we need? But FW 2016 womenswear felt right. Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chow staged their show at the Hauser and Wirth gallery, formerly the Roxy nightclub. Appropriate, considering the designers were tapping into the pre-gentrification 1980s glory days of this eternally transitioning city. A lot of the clothes would look as good on dudes as women, particularly the massive mock-necked faux fur hoodie in hunter green and the suede bomber jackets. The post-apocalyptic thing in fashion isn’t exactly new (Rick and Raf were doing these things 15 years ago), but Osborne and Chow have a way of taking experimental shapes and making them effortless and extremely easy to wear. I’ve never been particularly drawn to Public School as a menswear brand, but their ideas on women seem to more clearly spell out a particularly customer: a disaffected, jaded, but deeply intelligent anti-fashionista. Or something like that.

YEEZY SEASON 3

Maybe I’m a bit biased. Ok, I’m totally biased. Kanye West has been my favorite pop star for as long as I can remember, and being able to see 500 of his look on stage along with hearing his triumphant new record pretty much solidified that I was going to love this. But also, whether you love or hate his clothes it’s hard to argue that within a year he has already massively altered the fashion industry. He has brought distressing and militaria back to the forefront of fashion, with major fashion houses and H&M all ripping off the aesthetic and delivering garments of similar or (much) lower price points. I don’t go to H&M for a cheap blazer anymore, I go there for a massively oversized washed sweatshirt. As much as I’m sure fashion editors hate admitting this, Yeezy is as responsible as Vetements for fashion’s movement towards tastefully grunged out silhouettes. And Season 3 was just too massive to deny. Much of the aesthetic from the first two seasons carried over, but Kanye also tapped into the urban normcore aesthetic of his protégé Ian Connor as well as a little Balmain opulence with a lineup of mink coats. He also staged the biggest fashion show in history. People can hate him all he wants, but Kanye’s insistence on saying whatever he wants and being an asshole and yet still being judged by his artistic output, well that’s progress. That is freedom. This is America, and the man can say what he wants. I also love that, like his music, Kanye’s collections are the result of a massive think tank of ideas, with designers like Vetements’ Demna Gvasalia, Robert Gellar, John Elliot, and more all rumored to have helped along the way. Who else could get Pusha T to help him MC his show, or Cali DeWitt to do his merchandise, or Vanessa Beecroft to stage the biggest presentation of her life? So much to love, or loathe. So Kanye West.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Perhaps I’m just still trying to wrap my head around the Olsen twins being serious fashion designers, but their FW 2016 collection for The Row was the most luxurious display of minimalism New York has seen in seasons. Speaking of minimalism, Francisco Costa’s FW 2016 CK Collection line was crisp and clean as they come, if a little underwhelming on the ideas. More Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chow, who seem to be on a real roll, their second collection for DKNY tapped into the spirit of the brand: downtown NYC in the ‘80s. Now that they understand the brand DNA, they can start building their own. Eschewing a traditional fashion show for a beautiful presentation, Moses Gauntlett Cheng imbued a sense of isolation and vulnerability into a fleshy set of clothes. The casting, made of friends of the designers Esther Gauntlett, Jenny Chang, and David Moses, provided an immediate sense of the customers who are going to love these clothes. It’s no surprise that they sold out at Opening Ceremony in a second. Gypsy Sport, showing many of the menswear looks we saw at NYFWM on models, solidified the brand’s vision with FW 2016: high fashion for those with no connection to high fashion but much connection to a sense of freedom. Jeremy Scott FW 2016 was fun, loud, and gross as he ought to be.

DISAPPOINTMENTS...

Alexander Wang, fresh off his freedom from Balenciaga, couldn’t narrow the focus of his FW 2016 collection. There was just too much going on, from political slogans to elevated prep. As much as I love Alice Glass, Travis Scott, and The Weeknd, I highly doubt anyone wants to buy coruduroy carrying the label “Alexander Wang.” Sarah Burton’s new McQ collection, showing in New York this time around, couldn’t seem to help but imbue the casual McQueen line with Vetements rip-offery. VFiles, which is traditionally extremely reliable with giving you a sense of interesting new designers, failed to deliver on that grand tradition with some rather underwhelming collections for FW 2016.