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Proenza Schouler: An instinct to protect
The shoulder and the top of a smooth-as-silk arm was thrust to the fore as the models shrugged their way in tailored outfits at the Proenza Schouler show.
Proenza Schouler ready-to-wear autumn/winter 2020.
© Gorunway
Was it trick or treat? Backstage, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez were a little secretive about the voluptuous look that dominated the first part of their show. However tailored the outfit - from slim black dress to tailored pale blue coat or shiny red leather - bare skin appeared at a shifting neckline.
Proenza Schouler ready-to-wear autumn/winter 2020.
© Gorunway
“The whole thing really came together from instinct - and the mood that we felt right for right now,” said McCollough of this slip-and-grip effect.
Proenza Schouler ready-to-wear autumn/winter 2020.
© Gorunway
The firmly cut outfits - even with the opening at one side - suggested protection. And the designers admitted that was an element.
“We are very instinct-based designers,” McCollough said. “We were saying before we came into the studio, right after the holidays, that you can’t help but be influenced by the world around you. So in the collection with its narrative of unravelling, that co-existed with the idea of wrapping up yourselves and the comfort of duvets. It was the idea of things falling apart but also wanting to protect that.”
Proenza Schouler ready-to-wear autumn/winter 2020.
© Gorunway
The concept of the undone has been in fashion on-and-off for decades. The Proenza Schouler version was interesting because it was so neat and tidy. Asymmetric necklines might appear on a smart dress with gold buttons at the side, or on a double-breasted coat slipping off one shoulder. Only over-the-knee boots gave a kinky tremor to these polite outfits.
Proenza Schouler ready-to-wear autumn/winter 2020.
© Gorunway
As so often with Proenza Schouler, the collection was interesting but not entirely convincing - wouldn’t most women just pull up the open shoulder to fashion normality?
“They were cut like really classic shoulders,” Lazaro Hernandez explained. “So it is more in the styling and the idea that things are falling off the body - falling apart in some way. Those are just forces and ideas that were in our heads as we were working on the show. It’s really just about instinct and feeling.”
Coach by Stuart Vevers: Embracing the sprit of downtown NY
How great to be alive, with music drumming wildly, the real Debbie 'Blondie' Harry making an appearance, and creative director Stuart Vevers working with the abstract artist Jean-Michel Basquiat’s estate to produce an arty sweater. There was even the artist’s niece Jessica Kelly walking the show in a burgundy padded coat.
Coach ready-to-wear autumn/winter 2020 was influenced by abstract artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.
© Gorunway
And all that effort to sell handbags, even if they often seemed, in their clean, sculptural shapes, to be themselves pieces of art.
Coach ready-to-wear autumn/winter 2020.
© Gorunway
To Vevers, who was raised in the UK, the story of Jean-Paul Basquiat was fresh and exciting.
A model carrying a handbag from the Coach ready-to-wear autumn/winter 2020.
© Gorunway
“I was fascinated by that period - the late 70s and early 80s, when New York was at its most raw creativity,” the Coach designer said. “People were collaborating, like Basquiat who was a musician, an artist and a poet. That was fascinating to me because I never got to experience it - but it is within my lifetime. So, I was thinking, what is that energy like? And how does it relate to today's world?”
Jean-Michel Basquiat’s Jessica Kelly on the catwalk at Coach autumn/winter 2020.
© Gorunway
With almost every model - of both sexes - swinging the small, streamlined box-bags and with the musicians invading the runway, there was still something raw and energetic about the clothes.
Coach ready-to-wear autumn/winter 2020.
© Gorunway
They were first introduced by Vevers to the accessories-only company just six years ago.
Coach 1941 on the runway.
© Gorunway
After a long fashion road trip across America, the brand has come back in spirit to downtown New York. Proposals for both sexes for winter 2020 were tailored coats over colourful bottom halves (skirts or trousers ) with the short male sports coat as an alternative.
Coach ready-to-wear autumn/winter 2020.
© Gorunway
In spite of the feast of colours from lilac to green, to royal blue to scarlet, the focus was on cool tailoring. On the bags. And on Blondie.
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