Shortly before New York Fashion Week started, Alexander Wang, one of the brightest stars in the American fashion system, announced that this would be his last February show. Wang is shifting to an off-calendar June/December schedule to better align his runway events with sales. The move will accentuate what was already a fairly pronounced scenario: With Wang’s peers—Proenza Schouler, Rodarte, Altuzarra, et al.—decamped for Paris, the middle has fallen out of NYFW.
If the center will not hold, that leaves the designers at the extremes to make the news. Reassuringly, both the upstarts and the establishment delivered this New York season. Telfar Clemens’s musical performance piece was the buzziest event of the week, and the likes of Eckhaus Latta and Vaquera are overhauling the runway show top to bottom, starting with their friends and family approach to casting. At the other end of the spectrum there’s Calvin Klein’s Raf Simons, whose imaginative, doubtlessly expensive show set the bar high for immersive experiences, with inventive, desirable clothes to match.
What the future holds for Fashion Week here is very much an open question, but whichever way it shakes out we’re confident about American fashion. Click here for our top 10 collections of NYFW.
