At Fashion Week, Female Designers Show Their Strength

Beyoncé making an appearance at NYFW doesn’t happen every day, nor was the superstar dressed for the everyday — unless you count white and silver sequins from head to toe, with a matching headscarf, shades, and silver cowboy boots as everyday. I didn’t think so.

Queen Bey, her mother Tina Knowles, and her sister Solange, attended the Luar show, a terrific meditation on gender dressing and gargantuan shoulders, to cheer on her nephew, Daniel Julez Smith, who walked the runway. Bey surely also knows fashion outings can be a savvy way to promote your latest project. And she has one: a new country album, she announced earlier this week during the Superbowl.

Meanwhile, at the coliseum, the big movie opening this week is Bob Marley: One Love, so it seemed as much a synergistic coincidence as a clever marketing tactic when Saiyan Marley, the handsome grandson of the cultural icon, hit the runway at Laurence Basse, the two-time Project Runway star. Saiyah is the son of Bob and Rita Marley’s daughter Cedella.

“Making the everyday sublime.” This is the design imperative of Tory Burch and we can embrace it in just about any area of our lives. Her fashion mandate struck me as a helpful adaptation for maintaining one’s mental health. Between shows, I find myself peeking at my phone to see what Better Health, BetterUp, Iyanla van Zant, and Calm have to say today. They might advise finding the sublime in the ordinary. 

Burch took a sensible coat and made it soar in a fetching fringed sequin fabric. She gave the familiar trapeze skirt a sculptural workup in faux crocodile. She made dresses in raffia with humble smocking, and she found inspiration in a shower cap. The show’s signature bag, which finished off a leather jacket worn over a ruffled dress among other looks, was called the Lee Radziwill shopper tote — a stylish everyday carry-all named after one of the more down-to-earth socialites.

Reviewing shows across a 24-hour period, I felt that three women organically created a bulwark of strong feminine energy for American fashion. Burch, Gabriela Hearst, and Rachel Scott of Diotima together felt like a holy trinity of style. But their gender is not incidental to their vision.

Hearst’s collection felt calm and grounded. There was a plush caramel maxi shift dress and bathrobe coats belted snug around the waist. Her coats were particularly alluring. Because of her devotion to sustainability and her innovative knits, fabrics are always a point of interest. She used organic cottons. Cashmere was twisted to look like rope. Men in pale suits brushed by women in crochet dresses with Victorian sleeves.

Hearst explained in her show notes that she drew on the work of Katy Hessel, an art historian and podcaster who is an expert on women artists such as Leonora Carrington (another inspiration for Hearst), the British novelist and surrealist painter who lived in Mexico.

In her first New York Show, Diotima’s Rachel Scott, an LVMH Prize semi-finalist, brought distinctive designs bathed in Jamaican culture. A growing number of designers plumbing their Jamaican roots are putting Jamaica into a new position as a fashion force. Scott adroitly side-stepped the curse of the new designer: believing it necessary to stage blowout runway shows before they’re financially ready. She kept her ambitions modest.

As rude-boy reggae pumped up the come-to-party crowd, the mood felt like a cross between a lounge and an art gallery opening. Mannequins posed in groups of three and four in Scott’s signature crochet.

One wore a sequin crochet vest (a matching clutch bag) over a black crochet skirt with a waterfall of fringe down the side. There was a peekaboo red and white crochet dress that caressed inches of the model’s long body. Scott expanded her use of macrame, in keeping with her focus on luxury via artisanship. “I want to explode the craft,” she said.

Unexpectedly, there were several jackets and a temperature-cooling pink cotton caftan with decorative holes around the neckline. “I wanted to expand the language of the brand,” said Scott. “They know me for my crochet, but I can also do tailoring.”

There were plenty of vibrant colors throughout, along with sophisticated black. “I struggle with this quiet luxury nonsense,” said Scott with a laugh as her parents, in from Jamaica for the show, looked on with pride.

Sergio Hudson celebrates powerful women. He’s not afraid of their power. He wants to see them shine.  He works within an archetype. She’s glamorous, she’s confident and if she’s not feeling like Wonder Woman today… well, he’s got her back.

He has the pinstripe suit that flatters her curves, the corset bustier for armor and the caramel leather shirtdress with a mocha belt for looking like money.

The SH belt that blew up after Michelle Obama wore one, is now joined by the corset belt — a wide cummerbund that in an instant adds panache and a waistline to a knit dress or a pair of tailored trousers. And then there’s the dashing maxi coat in ivory or a pinstripe.

I particularly liked the contrast when Hudson flung a camel menswear coat over a shimmering gold gown. Maxi coats have been all over and Hudson’s models swept down  the runway in some of the best.

You can rely on Christian Siriano to go hard. Big collections, big vision. He showed just how versatile one of the biggest color trends — brown — can be. But brown can be a tough sell. Siriano had many thoughts about how to interpret it from men’s tailored trousers to disco-era prints. He added shine every which way including a floaty copper evening dress, and gold body-con dresses with look-at-me sleeves. 

Swedish Christian Juul Nielsen brings a European DNA to AKNVAS. With acid denim wash jeans and matching jean jacket with appliqued flowers he shows individuality. There were cable knits trimmed in pom poms. His gold drawstring hoodies were perfect for when you need a dash of flash. He layered on the gold and also tucked it under a somber outerwear in that earthy brown everyone — hopefully — will gravitate to come fall.