Last season, Donna Karan reminded us all of the NY in DKNY. Calling on rapper Angel Haze, A$AP Mob’s A$AP Illz, and photographer Michael Bailey Gates among many others, Donna tapped the reservoir of New York’s hottest young creatives for both her autumn/winter 14 runway show and accompanying campaign, putting a little punch back in the hometown label. While this season wasn’t quite as heavy on street casting, DKNY’s DNA has always been in the pace and attitude of fast-lane life in the 212. With equal parts sticky urban grit and chic feminine fun, Karan’s authentic city girl was working up a sweat for spring/summer 15.
The collection opened with all-over geo-printed patterns, and Karan quickly showed us her stripes. All of her stripes. Using neoprene-style synthetic fabrics, she created voluminous silhouettes that still preserved the collection’s clean lines and proportions. These boxy, sharper cut T-shirts were the perfect layering pieces for mixing stripes, solids, zig zags, and metallic geos. With all of this print and pattern on smooth, sleek proportions, Karan had to tread carefully with her color palettes. But the deeper pastel blue and yellow hues proved the perfect backdrop for the thin burgundy bands. This functional versatility translated similarly beautifully in the collection’s accessories: larger carry-all bags popped with colour bands and stacked platform sneakers made Karan’s girl-on-the-go look equal parts chic and sleek.
Video wall backgrounds offered sporadic flashes of brick walls, sidewalks, chain linked fences and spackled pavement to not only set the scene on NYC’s sticky streets but emphasise the relative smoothness of Karen’s silhouettes. Beauty details also nailed the city slicker ethos: hair took inspiration from the FKA Twigs playbook, while make-up provided the right amount of shine to make models look as if they’d just finished swerving around tourists to hop on an uptown 1 train, green juice in hand. This was a collection as strong and bold as the city itself.
Credits
Text Emily Manning
Photography Harry Carr