New York Fashion Week – Costumes for the everyday

One of the problems with fashion nowadays is keeping designs interesting, innovative and fresh. A way in which designer’s can distance themselves from the High Street, whilst keeping their designs original, is through themes that the designer explores as its ‘muse’. The main problem with this is that designs can become far too literal and turn into costumes rather then clothing. This can be especially hard for those who have learnt costume-making skills (Alexander McQueen and Zac Posen spring to mind). The more commercial fashion week that is New York, is probably the best place to look for what we call “costumes for the everyday” (not the most snappy name, we know) and this season there has been the entire range from the truly fantasy clothing of Rodarte, the Grecian and Rome inspired collection at Vera Wang and the Quaker inspired Zac Posen collection.

Vera Wang’s collection has been inspired by the HBO TV drama Rome. The colour pallet is indisputably Grecian and Mediterranean whilst the shapes use contemporary techniques to modernise togas and simple dresses. In fact this has been a small sub-trend for Spring Summer 2008, which has been picked up at Alberta Ferretti as well.

Each piece of the collection has Rome down to it’s core whether is this incredibly wearable ensemble. At first glance this is nothing but an un-shapely look, however the olive green and mustard yellow individual pieces can be worn as separates, this is an important fact to recognise whilst looking at catwalk collections; not all of the looks will work in real life on real women instead of (as Lisa Armstrong of the times puts it) “teenage giraffes”. Even as separates, the shape of the full skirt and t-shirt continue to look Grecian and this is key to keeping themes from going into costumes.

This blue, green high sheen coat is light enough to be worn in spring and can go over eveningwear and daywear. The way the fabric has been treated and printed means that the blue really pops out as it came down the catwalk. The photo also highlights the problems of fashion journalism; unless you see this coat in person, it will look unfitted and therefore un-special. Yet any fool can see that there is something quite magical about the way it has been printed and that it will stand out amongst a sea of black, beige, grey and white trenches.

Naturally it was the formalwear that really stood out as the highlights to Vera’s collection.

Toga’s in all colours

and shapes popped out from behind the screen and it really highlighted just how much the Ancient civilisations continue to influence fashion today (Lanvin, Versace and many more big name designers use very similar silhouettes). This brings to question whether doing a Roman collection is ‘costumey’ or just everyday for a past millennia? After all, classical artists, architects and even politicians and philosophers continue to sway their modern counterparts.

One of the highlights of the collection was how Vera brought the laurel wreath from a simple piece of headwear (and not one to be worn in the 21^st century) to the dress.

This final look was our most favourite of the collection ticking off all the right trend boxes (veiling and the classical roman theme), whilst being light, airy, ethereal and most importantly wearable. This dress will flow and is not to be taken lightly.

Zac Posen’s odd choice for a collection theme, that of the Shakers and early America turned out to be the best show of the week. Although the overall theme was the Shakers this allowed Zac to explore several more sub-themes of rural American history. But lets start off with the Shakers and how Zac turned dowdy into sexy by shortening the silhouette and using sheer fabrics. (We recommend not wearing the headwear though or you’ll look like a Shaker prostitute)

The Shakers were the basis for a subtle but powerful colour pallet of black and white with highlights and blocks of various shades of yellow, olive green and neutrals. Zac also evolved his signature suit with this collection. Of all the new (if you can call Zac Posen new this is something like his eighth year doing New York Fashion week!) Zac Posen is someone who is already iconic and loved by many of the red carpet. He knows his client very well and understands that although there is a comparatively small amount of celebrity clients, his main client is the urban woman looking for a new way of dressing and finding it at Zac Posen. This means that Zac’s separates are just as interesting as his eveningwear pieces (although eveningwear is perhaps his forte).

Although Zac evolved his signature suit, dresses (as with every collection this season) were the main event, and it was here that Zac chose to explore other sub-themes. His most successful one was the idea that an entire rolling field can be fitted onto a single dress. These frilly garments at first glance look simple and a bit too girly, but on closer inspection they have an underlying architecture that makes them stand out whilst evoking those aforementioned sloping fields. Short…

And full length dresses were totally fantastic. Pulling the look off in real life could be difficult; Zac described everything before his cloud pieces as commercial (we’ll get to that later) yet I can’t see the look bellow working for the average woman. This look has crossed over into the costume world yet it doesn’t hurt to look at and that’s the thing, fashion is a kind of art form and here Zac Posen has just managed to fit an entire field of hay (bales and all) onto a single dress, bravo!

Whilst the dress above may not have been completely wearable this dress is much more red carpet and still retains the ‘wheaty sub-theme’. A field in winter perhaps?

Whilst these field dresses are much more difficult to pull off, Zac did create shorter versions without the entire field becoming involved, instead a few strands of fabric wheat were used to continue the rural theme, whilst still being in Zac’s signature skimpy (yet not smutty) look.

Coming back to the original Shakers theme, Zac created this look as if a Shaker woman has just moved to the big city and wants to shake off her old dowdiness but keep her roots on her sleeve (pardon those awful puns).

Finally we get to Zac’s abovementioned cloud pieces, which are where I think the collection goes wrong, yes they do have the sense of clouds in their volumes and floatiness, but the colours are where the cloud themes stop. Yes they’re predominantly blue, but there is something about theme, which I can’t put my finger on that stops them from working for me. However it is nice to see at a New York fashion show that not everything has to be commercial.

Well that brings us to a sad end to our report and don’t worry Rodarte will be mentioned separately in the next post, we thought two designers was enough to handle in this already oversized post. This leaves us to mention that we believe that you should have fun in your dressing, don’t be afraid to experiment but realise at what point that dress you’ve been eyeing up at Bergdorf’s becomes a costume.