Two of yesterday's New York Fashion Week shows, Proenza Schouler and 3.1 Phillip Lim, were a study in contrasts. Lim is preoccupied with the needs of the modern woman, telling AnOther backstage, “How you start the day is never how you end the day. A lot of these clothes, they transform or reverse. So this collection about a girl living her life.” So almost out of necessity, the clothes had an aerodynamic feel to them – leather was bonded to jersey to become light as air, before being cut like paper while dresses and tops were draped and folded back like origami. It felt like a natural progression from last season where Lim had hit upon the idea of making clothes for girls on bikes – this collection looked multipurpose and at times, almost indestructible.
At Proenza Schouler however, things took a distinctly primal turn – an African tribal beat heralded a procession of crocodile and zebra prints, wood grain effects on heels and skirts made out of eel skin and raffia. “We were tired of cold, minimal and refined,” Jack and Lazaro told AnOther, “To us it felt kind of primitive, organic and human. We wanted warmth and life.” And while the collection did not reach the heights of their last two shows where they experimented variously with Japanese Shibori dyeing techniques and blowing up Navajo prints on their computer to electric effect; the boys of Proenza Schouler are still consistently one of New York’s most forward thinking designers – able to draw from heritage to create something utterly contemporary and who are delving deeper into creating their own increasingly sophisticated signature.
Text by Kin Woo
