Doja Cat wears red off shoulder dress, red boots outside Schiaparelli during Paris Fashion Week -Haute Couture Spring Summer : Day One on Jan. 23, 2023 in Paris.Christian Vierig/GI
Waking up this morning, still high from last night’s Marc Jacobs spectacular, the headlines that forecasted New York fashion week’s demise seemed altogether too dire. Fashion week isn’t dead, though it is in mid-disruption.
Against the backdrop of Extinction Rebellion teen protests, a groundswell of designers have begun putting concerns about their own impact on global warming at the center of their practices. Talents established (Gabriela Hearst) and emerging (Collina Strada’s Hillary Taymour) took up the cause this season, finding new ways to work with waste products and using deadstock as much as possible. Designing to a theme is an out-of-date concept. Sustainable design is the only kind of design for the future. Will that affect the potential for growth for these thoughtful women? Probably, but bigger, as we’re all learning amidst this climate crisis, isn’t necessarily better. The challenge going forward, for the CFDA, IMG (which runs the central Spring Studios venue), and brands themselves is how to make the week less damaging to the environment.
The loudest complaint about New York, of course, was that too many familiar names were missing. Maybe so, but Tom Ford, who nailed the laid-back glamour of LA at his pre-Oscars show, will be back, and in the meantime, the absence of stars like Ralph Lauren and Zendaya x Tommy Hilfiger (who’ll be back too) left room for newer names to emerge. Show me a young designer with more ambition or a better color sense than Christopher John Rogers, or more innate finesse for tailoring than Marina Moscone. The big names who did show—Hello, Marc Jacobs!—exhibited monumental vision. Who else, anywhere, gives you as much emotion? As much uplift? Rodarte’s Kate and Laura Mulleavy came close. After 18 months off the calendar, theirs was a particularly welcome return: dreamy, dark like our times, and a pretty clear reminder that the only constant is change.