The New York Times - 12.09.2019

D10 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2019

Are Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders
the muses of the moment?
This I was wondering while sitting deep
in an unused J/Z station on Kenmare Street,
watching Tom Ford’s version of simplicity
go by. In the run-up to this fashion week, in-
dustry-watchers spent a lot of time specu-
lating about what form the industry’s politi-
cization and opposition to the current ad-
ministration would take, but perhaps it’s
not so much President Trump who has had
a trickle-down effect on the designer mind,
but his competition.
I mean, there was Mr. Ford trading the
Park Avenue Armory, his usual show site,
for the Lower East Side; his preshow quaff
of Champagne for Sapporo beer; there he
was making... jeans.
Jeans! This is a man who regularly
pledges his troth to the art of getting
dressed up, a man who was, in his Gucci
years, the king of branding, and who later
plastered his “TF” all over. Whose first
show in New York when he returned from
London was at the ultimate uptown can-

teen, the Four Seasons restaurant, now de-

funct.

Well, maybe that says it all.

“I think that it is a time for ease,” Mr. Ford

wrote in his show notes, which also name-

checked the famous photo of Andy Warhol

and Edie Sedgwick emerging from a man-

hole on a Manhattan street, and the 1985

Luc Besson film “Subway.” He might have

added: a time for playing down obvious

privilege.

What this meant in his hands were small

silk jersey T-shirts, the sleeves rolled up,

atop big duchess satin ball skirts. It meant

the same tees (three-in-one!) pulled over

the head to form a shrug, and paired with

silk jersey loungewear — sorry, gowns,

caught up with sweatpants elastics bisect-

ing the body in asymmetric lines to create

an Aphrodite-going-to-Gold’s-Gym effect.

Actually, there were a lot of elastic waists.

Not so much for the men, who got lounge-

lizard pastel tuxedos. But back to the elastic

waists. They came in culotte suits, and in

long, slinky evening skirts that came with

molded metallic breastplates or bras for

evening. They looked comfortable (the

skirts, not the breastplates), if a little

shlumpy. It’s not Mr. Ford’s natural form of

expression. But give him credit for sensing

a change in the weather.

As the opening look at Vaquera, a T-shirt

over inflated pinstripes, read, “In Loving

Memory of New York.” Instead of a bride

later in the show, there was a black lace-clad

widow. Also a faux obituary on every seat:

“New York City Dies on Runway.” The old

sartorial symbols of the city, once held so

dear — Wall Street, benefit society, the

gilded penthouse, the string of pearls — are

starting to crumble.

This is fine for designers like Maria

Cornejo, of Zero + Maria Cornejo, who

never bought into that story anyway — her

slightly quilted, softly corseted polka dot

suits are for the woman whose brain needs

a soft place to land — and Mary-Kate and

Ashley Olsen of the Row, whose highly

honed brand of minimalism prioritizes the

interior and cleanliness of line over exterior

signs of aspiration. They make wellness for

the closet.

But it’s why watching the Carolina Her-

rera show, under a domed plastic gazebo in

the perennial garden of Battery Park, dedi-

cated to the “super bloom” this year in Cali-

fornia, and full of exploded floral prints in

crisp cottons, luscious colors and tulle polka

dots — full of no-nonsense lunching-at-the-

club, dinner-at-Doubles elegance — felt like

watching an era coming to a close. This was

the creative director Wes Gordon’s best ef-

fort yet (he took over from the brand’s

founder last year), and there is unquestion-

ably a set of women who need these clothes.

It’s just that they are an increasingly side-

lined set.

The sharing economy has reached fash-

ion: The Vaquera show with that R.I.P. New

York vibe was held as part of a group event.

The designers had banded together with

peers at Section 8 and Creatures of the

Wind/CDLM to have a joint show and share

the financial burden. The room was fizzing

with the kind of low-grade anarchic energy

that comes from shredding old forms and

piecing them back together in a sometimes

ridiculous, sometimes think-twice way. Af-

terward the audience ran... to the subway,

one and all.

Considering Elizabeth Warren as Fashion Muse

Spring 2020 looks,

from left: Tom Ford,

Carolina Herrera

and Vaquera.

LANDON NORDEMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

By VANESSA FRIEDMAN

JOHN TAGGART FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

FERNANDA CALFAT/GETTY IMAGES

TOM FORD,

SUBWAY?

SOMETHING

IS GOING ON.

In a historic theater in a part of New York
City far from the usual runway haunts, in
front of thousands of ravenous fans (includ-
ing some very famous ones) who stood in
lines around the block waiting for admit-
tance, in a room swollen with the voices of a
65-person choir, expectation and glamour, a
fashion week force gathered critical mass.
No, I am not talking about the Apollo The-
ater in Harlem, where Tommy Hilfiger and
Zendaya showed their latest see-now-buy-

now collaboration in front of a faux Harlem
street of brownstones at the service of a live
stream.
I am talking about the Kings Theater in
Brooklyn, where Kerby Jean-Raymond of
Pyer Moss unveiled the last in a series of
three collections conceived to re-examine
some of most basic American pop culture
tropes through an African-American lens.
In February 2018, it was the cowboy; last
September, it was family time and the back-
yard barbecue; and this season, it was rock
’n’ roll. And it is at the service of actual life.
Each time, he pulls in multiple collabora-
tors (artists, formerly famous black

brands) to expand his community, and in all

cases the point was, as the writer Casey

Gerald said in an oration before the show

that called out the anniversary of 1619 and

the arrival of the first slaves in America, to

reclaim black history and the stories we tell

ourselves about how we got here. Mr. Jean-

Raymond isn’t trying to change the shape of

clothes (he’s not Rei Kawakubo, challeng-

ing the definition of “garment”); he is trying

to change how we think about clothes and

who gets to be a part of making that myth

known as “American fashion.”

It’s been a long time since a New York de-

signer displayed real riotous ambition, one

that doesn’t have anything to do with Insta-

gram, likes or serving here-today-gone-to-

morrow desires. And a long time since one

took on the national conversation with nu-

ance and a lack of fear. “Diversity and inclu-

sion” are buzzwords of the moment, but this

wasn’t about that. It was about ownership.

It was about forcing a deeper reckoning

at a time when race has become a dividing

line in the country, and embracing a differ-

ent understanding in order to move for-

ward. That Mr. Jean-Raymond can do it so

gracefully, without accusation, and with

such multilayered meaning, is what makes

him so effective.

So, for example, this collection, titled

“Sister,” began with the history of Sister Ro-

setta Tharpe, a “queer black woman in the

church,” according to Mr. Jean-Raymond,

who also happened to be the “founder of

rock ’n’ roll” — though her contributions are

often unacknowledged. To celebrate that,

he reached out to Richard Phillips, a black

artist who was wrongfully imprisoned in a

Michigan jail for 46 years (he was exonerat-

ed of homicide charges in 2017), as well as

Sean John, the clothing line founded by

Sean Combs, the first black designer to win

a Council of Fashion Designers of America

award.

The models had been found during an

open casting on Instagram, and it took place

in the Kings Theater, because the surround-

ing neighborhood, East Flatbush, is where

Mr. Jean-Raymond grew up. He was open-

ing up his doors and bringing everyone

home.

That’s a lot of meaning to sew into

clothes, and sometimes it weighed down the

results. Mr. Jean-Raymond has what is

starting to look like a signature silhouette —

zoot suit-shouldered jackets cropped at the

waist atop liquid trousers for both men and

women — but hanging a little piano key-

board at the hem of the jacket flirted with

kitsch. Better were the broken keyboard

pen and ink prints, and the curving cuts of

the jacket lapels, which just hinted at the

curves of a guitar, seizing them back from

the skinny white rockers of legend.

Also the painterly silk tee dresses with

portraits by Mr. Phillips, the swishing long

shirts over skinny trousers, the pleated soul

goddess gowns in gold and periwinkle, with

trainlike sleeves. Not to mention the

Reebok collection, with its graffiti-led cool.

(Mr. Jean-Raymond was recently named

artistic director of Reebok Studies, charged

with making a kind of creative hub for the

brand.)

But those are small quibbles, and this was

a show — this is a designer — to be reck-

oned with. Backstage afterward, Mr. Jean-

Raymond, who is 32, rejected the character-

ization of himself as a “leader” and insisted,

“I’m not the race guy.”

All the same, Mr. Jean-Raymond is pre-

occupied with essence, with an ability to

make it personal. He was willing to sit out a

season, as he did last February, because he

needed more time to map out his ideas, and

because he thinks consumers need time,

too, to save money to buy clothes. But he

won the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund award

last year. He is outside the system and also

of it.

In a post-show interview backstage at

Kings Theater, he said thought he could use

fashion to correct the record because, “I

don’t care about selling clothes” and, in the

same breath, that “I want to make money.”

It sounds absurd, but in his world, those two

realities can coexist. The ability to not

worry about the one lays the groundwork

for the second. It could be a genuine game

changer.

Two looks from the Pyer

Moss spring 2020 show at

the Kings Theater in

Brooklyn.

PHOTOGRAPHS BY DOLLY FAIBYSHEV FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

Pyer Moss

And Power

Of Black

Truth

By VANESSA FRIEDMAN

FASHION REVIEWS

ROCK ’N’

ROLL,

IDENTITY AND

FREEDOM.