At the SC103 show held in the Brooklyn Navy Yard Claire McKinney and Sophie Andes-Gascon courteously left little bags of popcorn on everyone’s seats. The show was about to begin, and what a show it was! On the models hands: painted gold thumbs. On their heads: slick bouffants. On their figures: clothes dreamily uninhibited. The night turned into a party with dolled-up models mingling in the vast crowd of friends and fans, drinking wine and beer chilled in the icy flat of a pickup truck. The cool kids of New York were so turned out it was impossible to tell who was model and who was community, save for a single flash of gold on the finger.
In the world of upmarket mainstream brands—Khaite, TWP, Toteme, etc—efforts were more subdued, less popcorn, more… corny. All were appropriately lambasted by patron saint of critics Rachel Tashjian in the Washington Post. Present were the sins of sameness, the crimes of comfort, and an indulgence in reference that leads to unbefitting self-reverence. The big brands that haven’t moved to Paris are reliant on being too same to fail, influenced by broader social trends that favor good taste dressing as a projection of a rich inner life and wallet.
Thank god there’s another option! In moments of spiritual drought, a sip of water is that much cooler. New York has always been a D.I.Y joint. It’s a survivalist, upstart place filled with ingenuity, built by people too stubborn and cranky to live anywhere else. That’s what makes it fantastic. In the city that birthed upstarts like Marc Jacobs and Anna Sui, Telfar, Eckhaus Latta, Sandy Liang, and Collina Strada, being independently minded, weird, and communal is basically in the charter. A new generation is carrying the mantle. Brands like SC103, Gabe Gordon, Ben Doctor, Fey Fey Worldwide, Colleen Allen, Giovanna Flores, Mel Usine offer up the future and the present of New York Fashion Week.
At Gabe Gordon’s show models in his signature knits and stormy Americana marched through a firehouse. A stripper in a monokini interviewed guests before things kicked off. Instead of a show, Giovanna Flores screened a film she made that’s so close to the clothing, and the girls living in them, it feels as if the boundaries between person and cloth were sewn shut. RISD alum Ben Doctor presented a full universe with splashes of ’50s horniness and patent leather perfection. Fey Fey Worldwide embraced sameness fully with down-the-rabbit hole classics, attaching duffle bags pressed flat to a-line dresses. Romantic savant Mel Usine offered jolt-inducing commedia dell’arte frill. These are the clothes made for New Yorkers —gorgeous, strung out, done-up, funny, and with personality, not imagined, but in your face, where it counts!
And what’s more of a New York ethos than basically stealing a bunch of clothing right off the runway and inviting your two best friends who are both named Isabel/Isabelle (one a writer, one an art historian) to come model at the i-D office? Remember: If you can make it here you can make it anywhere.
models ISABEL FILER and ISABELLE REA
photo and styling by SAM KNOLL