GIF: Hugo Boss, Michael Kors, Proenza Schouler, s/s 2015 - IMAXTREE
Are pitching for a house in Paris? Consider their spring/summer 2015 show a forceful declaration of intent. Headhunters take note.
It’s not such a wild idea. With fellow Americans recently taking over at other European houses – Jason Wu at Hugo Boss and Jeremy Scott at Moschino – the new American aesthetic that Proenza nailed last night is looking like a particularly viable option. First, their innate understanding that normal clothes are cool – as in a lot can be achieved with clothes that are ultimately wearable – a twisted (in a good way) normal, if you like. Second, they matured their credible aesthetic, defining what they’re about and who their woman is in 12 minutes flat. And third, their consistency – they have been producing excellent collections on a regular basis and have consequently built a loyal following. There was a lot of Proenza on the front row last night.
What they proposed for spring felt particularly European in its approach: start out with something as normal as a knitted tank top over a knee-length skirt and end up with a long sheath dress fringed from bra-line to ankle. Build the normal quickly with a long pinafore, masculine boxy hooded bomber jackets and borrowed boyfriend’s suit trousers. Add in some leather trousers (make one leg red and the other black), maintain the colour-blocking through Prince of Wales check coats and jackets that look as if they've been snatched from a Savile Row tailor, throw in a white leather dress. Introduce snakeskin with a band on a plain vest, build to a snakeskin coat, apply interesting open-weave textures and graphic lines. Then – boom! – send out a finale of long woven fringed pieces, one in a particularly lovely cobalt blue, which looks as if it might have been made in a Paris atelier. And all the while be American about the ease and wearability of the clothes. That’s how Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez proved that they are ripe for a big job in Europe.
Image: Proenza Schouler, Hugo Boss, Michael Kors, s/s 2015 - IMAXTREE
Jason Wu is already in that position. On the 54th floor of 4 World Trade Center, with its concrete floors, pillars of transforming LED lights and the most spectacular wrap-around view of Manhattan, Wu showed his second collection for .
The setting couldn’t have been more appropriate. Models in go-to-work flat knee-high gladiator sandals with sharp shifts and smart coats in pale bonded jersey and leather, or the single sleek black trouser suit, or any of the form-fitting pencil skirts worn with precise white poplin shirts, might have easily just stepped out of a (very chic) boardroom from one of the tower’s other 73 floors.
The foundation of Wu’s Boss is tailoring inspired by the brand’s heritage as global purveyor of menswear. Where for last autumn/winter, coats and suits were solidly architectural, the designer seemed to have picked up on the few quibbles that critics had about lightening up the Teutonic German brand. So that’s what he did. Take the fit-and-flare dress micro-pleated with transparent seams, or the shifts with a fluid layer of translucency that modestly revealed models' legs. And where there was pitch black and urban greys last season, here the designer worked pale lemon and blue into the monochrome palette, ending with pale stone on Edie Campbell in a supple shimmering-like-glass skirt. It all felt less safe and more confident – a super-strong development of the Boss identity he put in place last season.
described his collection as that feeling of ‘catching the wind in your skirt’. He said he’d been thinking of: ‘How summer vacation makes us feel like kids, and not wanting to lose that feeling even though we’re back to school.'
Kors is the most formidable lifestyle expert, infusing optimism and casual elegance in all that he does. And his spring/summer collection was no exception – as light, effortless and undemanding as a summer breeze. Even if he did quip backstage that at that very moment he felt ‘like a crumpled piece of Kleenex’, this collection was anything but. From the opening pristine white sweater and calf-length dance skirt on Maggie Rizer, he proceeded to tick off his customers’ wardrobe needs with exceptionally real clothes: indigo denim in easy jackets and shorts or drainpipe trousers with big neat turn-ups, a grey sweater with a ruffle over one shoulder, crisp little throw-on blazers, a daffodil suede shift, a grass-green gingham sun dress, a flirty ivory lace party dress. The big idea here was the shirt and skirt combo – sounds simple enough, but the proportion of a man’s big white shirt with a black taffeta dance skirt and ballet flats looked like a seriously desirable alternative to an after-dark tuxedo. Ditto the freshness in a big cornflower-blue man’s shirt with a full net skirt that had sunflowers creeping up it. The collection was literally in full bloom with flowers – bold and beautiful – providing the joie de vivre, or joy of summer, that we all want to hold on to.
