At Tory Burch And Coach, Powerful Femininity Ruled On The Catwalks
Tuesday, September 10 2024 will go down in history as the day that a prosecutor met a convicted felon on a United States presidential debate stage in Philadelphia and confidently took him down, while a global pop star and self-described Childless Cat Lady made her long awaited endorsement of Vice President and Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris (calling her a 'warrior' for women’s and LGBTQ+ rights). Back in fashion land, designers—many of whom have dressed Harris or created Designers for Democracy merch for her fundraising efforts—had strong women on the brain for SS25 during the final days of New York Fashion Week.
Harris wore a Carolina Herrera suffragette white pantsuit on the day President Joe Biden was officially declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election. Creative director Wes Gordon’s confident SS25 collection, titled ‘Optimism at Play,’ was filled with fewer voluminous ballgowns and more sharply-tailored jackets in a mostly black and white palette with brilliant pops of Herrera red, delphinium blue, happy pink, and taxicab yellow.
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Gordon drew a thread from Georgia O’Keeffe to Janet Jackson, who provided the collection’s epigraph ('I found that I could say things with colour and shapes that I couldn’t say any other way — things I had no words for') and soundtrack, respectively. 'This is a house of incredible women,' he said of the label founded in 1981 by a Venezuelan immigrant that has long dressed First Ladies — and now would-be presidents. 'We celebrate incredible women, confident women. This is the era of incredible women and Herrera’s proud to be a part of that.'
Michael Kors is another of of Harris’ preferred tailors. His Michael Kors Collection mood board was filled with black and white Herb Ritts images and stills from the new Netlfix Ripley miniseries that has the noir-ish look of an Italian neorealist film. He even recreated the cliffs of Atrani from giant boulders at the performing arts space The Shed where he put on his show.
While we probably won’t see Harris in Kors’ summer-in-the-city looks that used swimsuits as layering pieces, there was a certain pragmatic athleticism and easy elegance to the collection’s sleek bandeau tops and maillot underpinnings, as well as the evening looks worn with flat sandals. 'Unless you’re going on a red carpet in Cannes or you’re going to the Met Gala, let’s stay with things that have that easiness — something relaxed and quite honestly very American,' he said.
Tory Burch, meanwhile, keyed in to the power and grace of female athletes more explicitly. She transformed the glass domed penthouse of the former Domino Sugar Refinery on the Brooklyn waterfront with trompe l’oeil painted tiles to look like the inside of a pool and sat decorated US Olympic gymnast Suni Lee front row. (Alexa Chung walked the runway, while the designer's famous Reva ballet flats, the shoe that shot her brand to fame in the mid-2000s, were remained for the new season.)
Her parade of sporty looks inspired by swimming and judo included more swimsuits — this time with sequins and worn with velour track pants —and cotton jacquard wrap dresses with double ties. 'I wanted the collection to be about the essence of sport because there's something really special about the solace athletes feel when they’re perfecting their craft, and their freedom of movement,' Burch explained.
Diotima designer Rachel Scott, who was named Emerging Designer of the Year at last year’s Council of the Federation of Designers of America Awards, draws inspiration from her native Jamaica, the same island nation where Harris’ father hails from. Her subversive takes on buttoned up femininity this season include sheer organza halter tops worn with office-ready pencil skirt diaphanous and silk georgette dresses embellished with heavy metal studs, alongside her signature crochet dresses and crystal mesh gowns.
At Toteme’s New York runway debut, which followed the Stockholm-based quiet luxury label’s first-ever show last season at Paris couture, co-founders Elin Kling and Karl Lindman drew inspiration from the New York woman. From our perch on the 48th floor of a modernist midtown skyscraper, we could see many ant-size examples of her type striding across the city’s grid dressed in head-to-toe black. On the catwalk, Kling gave the models inky layers with some shades of white mixed in. Many carried a new pouch version of Toteme’s culty T-lock bag, with the buckled strap looping elegantly around the wrist.
And, at the Coach show —held in the elevated park the Highline in front of a 25-foot-tall tree sculpture that glows an eerie shade of neon pink by the artist Pamela Rosecranz — executive creative director Stuart Vevers showed clothes that 'speak to today’s American reality.' If last season the heritage leather goods brand indulged in flights of fashion fancy with voluminous taffeta evening wear, the SS25 collection, titled Patchwork, was all about clothes for doing the work of, you know, saving democracy and the planet.
There were just three key silhouettes: blazers, chinos and vintage I Love New York T-shirts that had been cut up, embellished with deadstock buttons and charms, or otherwise customised. Harris’ step-daughter Ella Emhoff modelled one of the tees that had been sketched over and decorated with a knit patch.
Vevers is serious about reducing Coach’s environmental impact through upcycling, so much of the clothing was made by cutting apart vintage garments and piecing them back together into new shapes, such as a loose skater pant fashioned from standard issue khakis. Perhaps he was thinking about what kind of future his 4-year-old twins, Vivienne and River — who were seated in the front row on the laps of his husband Benjamin Benjamin Seidler and friend designer Gabriela Hearst — will have.
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