NEW YORK — When the invitation to the Calvin Klein show arrives, it is so big and bulky you think it is a box of chocolates, or maybe a scarf? But no. It’s just a lot of paper, including a huge poster, and a ticket to the show buried within. It’s as if none of our conversations about waste and the environment ever happened, that the clock has stood still since Bill Clinton was in the White House and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” was on the radio.
It smells like famous people who have known each other for decades at the show, with Mr. Klein himself in the audience for this homage, along with his erstwhile wife Kelly, and Kate Moss and Christy Turlington. On the runway are replicas of the late 20th century fashions that made this designer’s reputation in the first place. The collection features many shades of gray and is presented without a trace of irony. Skirt suits cover the knee; a cape coat is held together by a clenched hand; an impressively tailored trench is waiting for Melanie Griffith to climb the ladder in the last reel of “Working Girl.” A rare jolt is provided by a coat made of material reminiscent of the curly cord that connected receivers to land-line phones, back in the day.
The climate emergency might not have been front and center at Calvin Klein, but it has always loomed large at Collina Strada. Hillary Taymour has thankfully relinquished the animal tails and vegetable barbells that bounced down her previous runways and presents a collection that is surprisingly sober — if bug-eye sunglasses and audacious pile-ons of sheer deadstock fabrics can be described as relatively grown up. The casting is defiantly diverse and includes Aaron Rose Philip, the transgender disability activist, and the actor Hari Nef in layers of Goth tulle.
No gauze flutters on the Eckhaus Latta catwalk. Instead, there are leather jackets — especially fetching in ketchup-red — sporting shoulders so strong they could be read as squaring off for tough times ahead. Leather is likewise center stage at Khaite, which features a humongous ring, suitable for horse racing, that has been installed in the Park Avenue Armory. The skins here are fashioned into a multitude of outerwear far more rarified than anything on a humble Eckhaus Latta runway. A leather swath-like affair is draped atop a tee shirt; a sleek pencil skirt would suit a tough-minded Charlotte Rampling. Other suggestions include a deconstructed Cinderella dress, for a fairy tale heroine whose glad rags were only partially transfigured by the wave of a wand.
The magic wand at Anna Sui is meant to transport you not to Calvin’s 1990s but those fraught years between the two World Wars. (And what a relief it is to hear Rodgers and Hart on the soundtrack after the infernal booming and clanging that assault the ears at so many runway shows.) Sui’s madcap heiress, whose family hasn’t lost their starched shirts in the 1929 stock market crash, can be found slouching around in faux leopard and fair isles — for riding to the hounds — along with turquoise lace and sequins and floral brocade. Thus accoutered, she stomps the night away on the roof of the Savoy, with no inkling that the Blitz will soon wipe that smile off her face.
There is a book your seat at Joseph Altuzarra, but it is not “How Fascism Works” by Jason Stanley; it is Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights.” As per usual, the pages are interspersed with swatches meant to illuminate the designer’s inspirations. Bronte’s influence may not be immediately discernible in the collection, but there are pleasant chiffon dresses, and suits with skirts that end in a big round pouf as if made for a semi-shorn poodle.
Anticipating that at some point you will have had enough of drab hues, Christopher John Rogers resumes his advocacy of bright stripes in audacious colour combinations This time around he has employed grosgrain ribbons that encircle the hems of trenches. Despite the overall cheeriness, some of the silhouettes — teeny tiny breast cups on top, blossoming into distended hips below — would challenge even the most spectacular physique, but a poison apple green coat would conceal a multitude of perceived imperfections.
High above the city, on the 37th floor of a building in the useless behemoth that is Hudson Yards, Henry Zankov presents the extremely appealing knitwear that won him the CFDA’s American Emerging Designer of the Year prize in 2024. If the event is modest, the jacquard pullovers and polka dot crew necks, enlivened with a splash of silver spangles tied around the waist or functioning as a foil for golden tinsel fabric, offer just the right balance of practical and fanciful.
Whereas Khaite installed a horse ring in the Park Avenue Armory, Coach has imagined the space as a courtyard surrounded by bricked up buildings. You long in vain for the models to lean out these windows when the show begins, but alas, they remain painted shut. Instead, the mannequins — and this gang really does appear to smell like teen spirit — lope around in gigantic baggy trousers. No one will complain that the collection doesn’t have a through-line — Coach designer Stuart Vevers has a deep commitment to these pants, sometimes recommending them patched and pre-torn, sometimes pulling a sweet pale frock over them. At the end of the show, four beaded flapper dresses emerge, and the fact that they are likewise shown over pants does nothing to diminish their beauty. They would suit a latter-day Zelda Fitzgerald, who herself was only 19 — still a teenager — when she married Scott.
Does the intended client for Michael Kors recognise that the site of the show, now a swanky residential building, was once the Tunnel, a notorious nightclub, where she spent wild nights best not remembered? The quiet collection perhaps underscores her current anxiety — her stock portfolio is ok, but she is deeply worried about the future. To assuage her distress, there are skirts with just a hint of carwash pleats, and those long overcoats that seem everywhere this season, and as a final act, black sequinned evening dresses in inclusive shapes that range from tank to caftan.
Tory Burch holds her show not in a former club but on two levels at the Museum of Modern Art, and there are gigantic screens installed so that you can see what is going on on the main floor, if you are seated upstairs. Which means that before the model strides by, you have a blurry preview of the Japanese brushed jersey sweatpants that sport a big athleisure stripe down their sides. These could be paired with a Tory blazer and worn to an office job, but even if relegated to dog-walking duty, they would be a vast improvement over the ratty gym pants you usually rely on.
The hysteria that usually comes with a Luar show is muted this season, maybe because it is held in a resolutely non-bohemian glass tower on the East River. But this doesn’t mean the clothes have toned down their transgressive swagger. The inaugural look — a jacket with a slashed neckline worn by a guy whose headgear seems a little like a shower cap with dangling tin foil talons (not that this is a bad thing!) — is followed by floor-sweeping coats and abbreviated jackets with low backs and hugely distended shoulders. (There are plenty of big shoulders on runways this season, but Luar got there first.) Some of the models hold their be-sleeved arms stiffly out front, like the stylish confreres of Frankenstein; a black feathery suit is giving Abominable Snowman vibes, if that creature had a dark side. One model wears a t-shirt that reads “I Talk About You in Spanish.” But in any language, these clothes have a seductive charm sadly lacking at so many New York shows.
The last presentation of the week is traditionally Thom Browne’s fever dream, and, as ever, you are invited to submerge yourself in a surrealistic orgy. Chirping noises greet you upon arrival; the stage is full of white origami birds. There’s a birdcage on a white desk at which two pretend-ornithologists in Browne mufti — they’re wearing gray duffel coats and carrying his trademark briefcases — sit motionless. But if the inner meaning is opaque, the clothes are easy to desire.
An army of tweed overcoats has been fancifully embellished and embroidered (a particular stunning example has jewels arranged like a necklace). The silk fabric that is used for rep neckties is ingeniously incorporated into pleated ensembles. (Of course, it wouldn’t be a Thom show without a gingham ballgown so deranged, it makes the wearer look like a giant checkered cake with legs.) Some models have plumes stuck to their eyelids; a voice on the soundtrack intones that “Hope is the thing with feathers.” When Emily Dickinson wrote that verse, 160-odd years ago, could she have imagined our current predicament, and how hope itself would seem so thin on the ground?