After staging a show on the rooftop of The New Design High School last season, Beckett Fogg and Piotrek Panszczyk moved Area’s fall/winter 18 show down to the school’s subterranean indoor pool, where hundreds of editors crammed onto wooden benches. Maybe it was the thick chlorine fumes, but there was a strangely calming mystical vibe that permeated the space. This wasn’t your average pool party: Fogg and Panszczyk’s sci-fi glamor girls hit the pool tiles in all Area’s hallmarks, tightened up with cool masculine tailoring. The decade-defying mashup included skinny disco trousers, diamanté-embellished fringe and matching mesh tights, animal-printed maxis, and teensy party dresses that probably called for pants, but screw it. Accessories were also wonderfully garish in a weirdly cohesive way. Backstage, tiled locker spaces and shower rooms were littered with furry kitten slides, floppy 70s-style hats, and all manner of crystal-embellished trimmings. Elsewhere there traces of Area’s sportswear-leaning origins — including a fitted velour tracksuit dusted with silver glitter.
