Wiederhoeft Fall 2024 Ready-to-Wear: Intimate Moments, Fantastical Clothes
Leading up to New York Fashion Week, Jackson Wiederhoeft was looking into Upper East Side townhomes for an 80ish-capacity, salon-style show before the option to show at IMG’s NYFW hub, the Starrett-Lehigh Building, arose. He couldn’t pass it up, but the salon was certainly here to stay, in abstracted manners.
Wiederhoeft, like his former boss Thom Browne, isn’t one to show a simple down-and-back runway show. In lieu of a performance, Wiederhoeft once again tapped movement director Austin Goodwin to work with each model (whom Wiederhoeft now considers like family) to express the meanings of each of their looks down the fog-machined runway. “That salon feeling of, ‘This look has been developed for this person,’” he said.
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The ethos tied directly into his “Secret Room” titled collection that melded couture-level techniques, fantasy, cheekiness and wearability across demi-couture, ready-to-wear and bridal fashions. The collection played to the idea of many personalities and style choices but was elevated and cohesive throughout.
“Obviously fantasy is amazing. A lot of these styles are very fantastical, but very grounded in those intimate experiences I’m having with clients in the changing room, which is where people are so vulnerable and you get to the bottom of their desires,” he said backstage.
The “Secret Room” is actually the mirror-less fitting room within his showroom, and is where Wiederhoeft takes one-on-one appointments with brides and private clients on a near-daily basis. The designer said the most frequent experiences are customers’ amazing reactions after seeing themselves in a corset — his signature and throughline of each collection — for the first time.
“It feels like we opened this door for people to see another version of themselves. Not someone else, but an even grander version of who they already are. To me, that’s key,” he said. In that vein, there were dual-personality (or sister) looks across fall, as in look eight’s double-faced silk satin corset with draped black tulle overlay and black double-faced satin bow, crepe back satin shorts and bow miniskirt with a tulle tutu with look nine’s “Remember Me” stripper trompe l’oeil double-layer T-shirt, mini hand-embroidered tulle slipdress and playful accessories.
Wiederhoeft said he didn’t feel like anything was “totally new” within fall, which he loved. Rather, an evolution of signature ideas or those he looked back on to interpret for the present, such as crochet, which first appeared 13 collections ago. For fall, he worked with the same designer to craft the celadon-green hand-crochet cardigan and pencil skirt (in silk ribbon and gold tinsel). In addition, corsetry evolved beyond signature tops and megawatt embroidered dresses into stellar moire salon jackets, coats and belted shirting.
There were honestly too many good clothes to list, but what a good problem to have.
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Launch Gallery: Wiederhoeft Fall 2024 Ready-to-Wear Photos
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