Google debuts its high-tech glasses on Diane von Furstenberg’s runway, Alexander Wang goes Day-Glo, and Victoria Beckham gets flirty. See highlights from the first four days of New York Fashion Week.
Diane von Furstenberg’s show always offers a front row filled with heavy hitters and a collection filled with explosive color. And this season definitely didn’t disappoint. Several of Google’s high-tech “augmented reality” glasses came down the runway on the models, giving the much anticipated Glass by Google product its official first spin. Sergey Brin, Google’s cofounder and the head of Google X, its division for innovative projects, sat in the front row with his own pair of the glasses, grinning the entire time.
Several models came down the runway wearing them, each coordinated with the color of her outfit: red glasses over an orange dress, turquoise on turquoise, and so on. Von Furstenberg and her creative director, Yvan Mispelaere, appeared for their final bow each wearing the glasses. Brin popped up from his seat and walked down the runway with them. According to representatives backstage, each of the glasses—on Brin, DVF, and the models—was recording footage that will be edited into a short video highlighting a variety of different perspectives. According to Brin, the idea came up at a conference with von Furstenberg. “I had a prototype of these that I was testing, and she loved them,” he told The Daily Beast backstage. “For me, it’s about style and comfort—and that’s what her clothes really symbolize.” Brin says the glasses will hit the market next year, and a price point hasn’t yet been announced. (Google has taken early orders for its Explorer Edition, which will retail for $1,500, but Brin says the mainstream customer glasses will retail for less than that.)
Frazer Harrison / Getty Images for Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week
The theme of von Furstenberg’s spring collection was “palazzo,” and she debuted a romantic collection filled with terra cotta shorts and dresses, bright orange pants, gold sequined jackets, jade tops, and flowing, kiwi-colored dresses. In the program notes, von Furstenberg and Mispelaere described the collection around the idea: “Some fairy tales end with the girl marrying the prince ... some start there.” The notes continue: “Sharp lines cut like a palace window, and arabesque-inspired color-blocks frame the body, accentuating the sensuality of her curves. Light and bold, she gravitates towards the sun, decorated with shining silver bells.”
Jason Wu presented a collection Friday that was simultaneously dreamlike and showed a lot of skin. He explained that he was inspired by two very different photographers—Helmut Newton and Lillian Bassman. “What I found in common between the two of them was an appreciation of the feminine form,” he told me after the show, “and identifying the female body.” There were high-waisted leather shorts, dresses with harnesses, and then dreamlike tulle ball gowns. It was almost four years ago that Michelle Obama took the stage at the inaugural ball in a one-shoulder white dress designed by Wu. It effectively put Wu on the map. And in four years, a lot about the Obamas has changed. But Wu has evolved too. “Ever since then, I didn’t want to take it all in stride,” he says. “I wanted to mature as a better designer every season. And I think this collection more than ever, you’ll see the grown-up version of Jason Wu.”
Instead of his usual location of the gorgeous and airy IAC lobby, Prabal Gurung this season held his spring show inside a sweltering warehouse on Pier 57. It was dark and sinister—but what came down the runway was anything but. It was a collection filled with unique textures, loose silhouettes, and diaphanous dresses. There was something for everyone in the collection: angular black tailored jackets, ruffled red dresses, and black feathered embellishments. Gurung said artist Anish Kapoor was the inspiration for many of the prints.
There’s always a unique mix of people at Band of Outsiders’ shows. In the front row this season was the impeccably cool New York Knick Tyson Chandler looking fresh off the Rick Owens runway in an entirely black ensemble, red Doc Martens boots, and a bowler hat. Then there was Aziz Ansari—something of a brand ambassador for Band at this point—and the perennially smiley Mandy Moore, who wore a fantastic khaki suit. She must have been sweltering. The collection, though, offered relief from the muggy New York heat. It was a transportation into a kind of beachy enchanted forest. “Little bit of Hunger Games, but really Battle Royale,” said designer Scott Sternberg of his inspiration this season. There were dressed-up military jackets, crochet sweaters and tops, cutout dresses, and several bandeau tops. “I wanted to balance the idea of a uniform and something romantic and almost from another time and place with something really sexy,” Sternberg said. “And that Topanga Canyon, Malibu ’70s surfer chic is very much part of what we do.”
Alexander Wang always puts on a good show. The best, some might say, of Fashion Week, judging by performance value alone. Last season he brought out Gisele and a slew of other classic models for his big finale. This time, his runway practically became a rave. Before the show began, a voice came over the loudspeaker: there would be no flash photography of any kind—even on cellphones. Members of the audience (including rappers ASAP Rocky and the duo Die Antwoord) looked around, perplexed. A series of black-and-white pieces came down the runway, each with geometric cutout stripes. Models wore their hair parted down the center, with long strips of tape. Then came an almost unrecognizable Liberty Ross—the model who recently has received attention for her husband’s affair with Kristen Stewart. For the finale, models in white dresses came out, and the lights went off—revealing glow-in-the-dark dresses. The crowd oohed and ahhed, but one critic wasn’t impressed. The clothes, wrote Cathy Horyn, “had focus in terms of minimalist shape and futuristic textures, but there was no moment of uplift. A glow-stick snap of radiance isn’t enough.” But the real party went down after the show—at the former Emigrant Industrial Savings Bank building across from City Hall. The surprise performer was Busta Rhymes, who stopped to congratulate the designer. “To be so young and to be so prosperous, and to be so productive and to be so f--king incredibly creatively genius, it’s only right that we all make a toast to you and your amazing accomplishments that we’re celebrating tonight, my brother,” he said.
Things were a little bit different from usual at Victoria Beckham’s show Sunday morning. Well, one thing was the same: there was her husband, David Beckham, in an impeccably tailored suit, tucking into the front row. But the clothes that came down the runway were looser than Beckham’s normal fare, and the collection offered more separates than normal. There was a flirty factor, too: silhouettes had a little flair at the bottom, bra straps were exposed, and there were lattice cutouts on tops. The palette was largely white, black, and bright orange, and expert tailoring was featured.
American sportswear has always been Derek Lam’s shtick, but the designer gave his signature look an altogether more modern-cool twist this season. There were perforated leather crop tops, oversize trenches, and metallic and macramé pencil skirts paired with luxe sweatshirts. It seemed as though every outfit was tailor-made for the fashion editors, designers, and It girls who filled the front row (Carine Roitfeld, Jenna Lyons, and Harley Viera-Newton, to name a few). The colors—fatigue greens and sunny yellows, deep blues, greas, and reds—made the collection seem more autumnal than springy at times, as did the abundance of leather. But leather has been popping up all over the runways this season. “We’ve seen it at Alexander Wang and Victoria Beckham, but Derek made it groovy and loose, which was sort of the theme of the whole collection,” said renowned stylist Mary Alice Stephenson after the show. “Any of those pieces could have been dressed up or dressed down. For me, that’s the new American sportswear—it’s got a twist, whether its technology or color or fabrication or embellishment.”
Mark Von Holden / Getty Images
After three seasons of runway shows in the gilded ballroom of The Plaza Hotel, designer Thakoon Panichgul moved his show this season to a sparse gallery in Chelsea, where his clothes shined brighter than they have in years. His opener was a satin dress featuring a bird motif inside a curved, gilded cage that echoed the shape of the dress. (In a preview, Thakoon described the collection as “magical” and “otherworldly.”) Where some other standout collections have seemed more fall than spring, Thakoon’s show was all spring. Among the highlights for casual wear were semisheer sweaters in bright colors worn atop white collared shirtdresses.
Allison Joyce / Getty Images
“Congratulations, darling!” “Fabulous!” “Unbelievably beautiful!” Such was the well-deserved stream of praise lavished on Zac Posen after his show Sunday night at Lincoln Center. Just after sundown, the lights went up at Avery Fisher Hall’s terrace, Etta James’s jazzy “A Sunday Kind of Love” started playing, and then Naomi Campbell walked out in the first look of Posen’s stunning collection—a corseted floral day dress with cap sleeves and a swingy hemline. From the top models to the glamorous gowns, Posen rolled out one showstopper after another: romantic silk and chiffon cocktail dresses cinched at the waist; Alek Wek in a rose-embroidered navy bustier paired with a long satin skirt; Coco Rocha closing the show in a tiered organza ballgown. “American swans,” Posen said, summing up his collection in two words. “It’s about elegance and a return to glamour,” he told The Daily Beast while greeting a receiving line of fans, including Margherita Missoni, Kelly Osbourne, and Martha Stewart, who tapped her feet and swayed to the music during the show. Four hours later, Posen’s name was still trending on Twitter.
Joseph Altuzarra’s collection, which showed Saturday night, featured boyish blazers and over-the-knee gladiator boots. After his stellar collection last fall, which displayed the designer's strength for outerwear, Altuzarra once again proved his tailoring chops. His spring collection featured variations of a traditional man’s workwear jacket, often layered over railroad-stripe cotton shirts, with discreet moniker labels on the breast pockets. One particularly inventive touch: hidden vents on the sides of some jackets and coats through which models slipped their arms, wearing the garments like a cape.
Jason DeCrow / AP Photo
Before the clothes took center stage at Joseph Altuzarra’s show Saturday, the Twittersphere was buzzing about the star-studded front row—which included Kate Bosworth, Jessica Chastain, and Tyson Chandler.
