There was a Tommy Hilfiger runway parade at New York Fashion Week.
After a few years away, the designer came back to his home base with his signature see now/ buy now preppy cosplay, as well as a special “Tommy Factory” spectacle. In a preview, Mr. Hilfiger said he had been inspired by Warhol since they met in the 1980s. Big up the idea of the in-person experience.
He had invited a group of famous people to sit in the front row, including Kate Moss, Jon Batiste and John Legend. He didn’t have a tent and it was bucketing down.
In a world that doesn’t have much truck with them any more, the result is an empty shell of American references.
There wasn’t a lot of substance underneath. Substance is what New York fashion requires.
There is a difference between what was and what may be.
Many of the names that defined the city’s style are no longer around. The elders are watching a play. Generations of designers who came after and were heralded as the Next Big Thing seem stuck in a very minor key.
New names are muscling in from the edges, often without classical training, but with the self-belief and explosive energy that has historically propelled fashion forward.
Power dressing is not a uniform for climbing the corporate ladder but a uniform of identity for a mosaic of different cultures. It could realign the stylescape. The strategies should be considered.
A guest at the Tom Ford show said that he felt like he was in a time machine. The show was being held downtown on Vesey Street, but the vibe was like nothing we had seen before. He was subverting the beigeness of the double G and boogying on the lip of the bad taste volcano when he was in the 70s and ’80s.
It was like a lost-days-of-disco nightmare of pastels, Studio 54 cowgirls, Elvis-in- Vegas embroidered velvet hot pants, lace G-strings and shine, updated with a dash of athletic wear and set to the beat of Robert Palmer thrumming. There is a place where Sparkle becomes something dark and desperate. At this pitch, glamour can be tiring.
It was a reminder that Mr. Ford defined sexy and Y2K for a while. At the turn of the millennium, his work had a self-assurance that was similar to that of Michael Kors, whose polished collection of urban tropicana included slick blazers and sarong skirts trimmed in acres of silk fringe.
As the last song of Mr. Ford’s show said, “Time waits for no one.” All this nostalgia is starting to look like a postscript.
When the art crowd has moved on, the designers still look like they are designing for them. They added giant flamenco ruffles to the sleeves of their tunics and mini dresses, upsized the flares of their skinny pants, and rendered shirt dresses in sheer lace with cuffs. Joseph Altuzarra has settled into a rhythm of anoraks and striped shirting, which makes for a cool contrast.
Stuart Vevers of Coach just stuck his head in the sand and built a ghost town on the Coney Island boardwalk which had some disaffected youth in oversize beat-up leather jackets, Aran knits and babydoll dresses.
At least Wes Gordon threw down a gauntlet of sorts, announcing backstage, “I am tired of being afraid to admit I love the word pretty” and leaning into his words with a bouquet of floral prints and seaside stripes on cotton shirt dresses, matching shirred trousers and Even though she seems like an increasingly extinct species, there is still a customer for that.
“I was thinking a lot about how women don’t want to be restricted.” It’s possible to move through the world as you please. An idea is amazing.
At Peter Do, the designer’s four-piece suits, which include jacket or shirt, trousers, and pleats overskirt attached with a long leather belt, seem like the modern heir to Donna Karan’s “seven easy pieces.” Add or subtract pieces at will as the occasion demands (the skirt, like a train, here; a billowing silk duster, like a cloud, there), then leave.
Another one at the same place. Cecile Richards, the former head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was one of the people who lived with the Resistance Revival Chorus.
The edges of tailored pantsuits and long gold dusters were covered in big gold. Crochet swirls were used to make the tunics and trousers. The leather was cut into shields like columns.
If you want to model a gold breastplate, the period after the fall of Wade may be the right one. As their wombs become the subject of public debate, women are signing up to vote in record numbers. Something to wear is what they are going to need.
There is a new story to be told about clothes that derive from a value system based on community morals. Groupies wearing the clothes of the designers they have come to see are not paid ambassadors but genuine converts who fill the streets with like minded people.
Hillary’s collection of gargantuan flower-power cargo pants, shrunken T-shirts and deconstructed court dress (panniers, corsets, trains) recycles and remixes not just materials but also historical moments.
The scraps of fabric that were found, like hotel towels and doilies, were pinned and layers into pseudo-garments that were more like suggestions of clothes. Their clothes are similar to collectible ceramics. squishy bubble tops that foam over the torso, metallic T-shirts, and a pair of one-legged pants were included.
Both labels started as quasi-art projects, but have grown into solid businesses, which seems to be the direction of Puppets and Puppets, the line by the mixed media artist. She mixed a number of items this season, including a little crystal cardigan and skirt set, and snack food-bedecked handbags. They tasted good.
The harnesses, cages and shredded finery at Elena Velez, who works between Milwaukee and New York, don’t scream “wear me” The way in which they deal with the body, its power, co-opted and controlled suggests that this is a designer who understands the direction in which things are headed.
Edvin Thompson of Theophilio mixed references to fashion history with the story of his journey from Jamaica to New York in “I [heart] TP” ribbed T-shirts and Theophilio graffiti splashed over souvenir shop images.
Who Decides War, a brand built on the idea of denim as the universal American religion and jeans in all their versions, also has Everard Best and Téla D’Amore. The words are written on the fabric and in the seams.
The result is sweatshirts with stained glass windows cut into the body and a few dresses with the same complex surface treatments.