Hopes and Fears at New York Fashion Week

NEW YORK — Could there be a more fraught time to stick clothes on an American runway than this particular September? New York Fashion Week took place during an incredibly intense political season, with many anxious about the outcome of the presidential election, a mere 55 days away. How can you be expected to pay attention to fashion when your head is spinning with hope and fear?

Some designers confronted these stakes head on. At Willy Chavarria, perhaps the best show of the season, the designer put a copy of the United States Constitution on each seat. As for the clothes, Chavarria once again offered his gorgeously rendered capacious trousers; workers’ shirts were embroidered with Willy Chavarria Fashion Services in the spot where a company logo usually appears; and oversized blazers were paired with khakis for leaps into the white collar world.

The entire collection was a loving take on classic American sportswear — this country’s real gift, if we care to be honest about it, to the world of fashion. Chavarria is proudly Mexican-American and his shows consistently celebrate his heritage: living, breathing refutations of anti-immigrant fervour. At the end of the show, the designer emerged wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the letters ACLU, for the American Civil Liberties Union.

If the clientele at Alaïa didn’t seem too worried about the results in November, maybe it is because they are citizens of the world, flitting from Fishers Island to Positano. “It’s fun seeing all these old models,” the critic next to me mused, and indeed, the air-kissers circulating in the ivory confines of the Guggenheim Museum included Linda, Naomi and other legends known by their first names.

The proceedings began 45 minutes late. It was clear we were waiting for somebody famous, who turned out to be Rihanna, sweeping in like a voluptuous sea creature swathed in sparkling Alaïa net over a too-tight corset, pearls creeping up her legs. The show itself made use of Frank Lloyd Wright’s iconic spiral ramps, with the models starting at the very top, looking like chic ants you could barely see. But as they grew closer the details of their outfits were revealed — palazzo pants with a clown ruffle at the waist; small swishy low-slung skirts paired with bra tops; a scrumptious salmon pink chubby jacket; a curvaceous white puffer that was an homage to the famous quilted satin evening jacket by the American couturier Charles James. It was all beautifully executed, a discourse on elegance and proportion, and it was obvious that designer Pieter Mulier had put his heart into it — so why did it seem so bloodless?

The Guggenheim is a far cry from the hidden East Village cemetery where Collina Strada had a guy in a tiny velvet ensemble pushing a hand lawn mower across the grass, and a modern dancer was leaping and writhing and threatening to ingest the sod. Hillary Taymour, the line’s creator, has a mile-wide playful hipster streak, a goofiness that can be endearing, but this time around she reigned it in, to good effect. Some of the pale tie-dye chiffon frocks brandished ruffles; some were pulled over trousers; one disclosed a bared shoulder, and all were disarmingly pretty and managed to resist wallowing in the saccharine.

How do you keep your signature fresh without betraying the ideas that attracted customers to your brand in the first place? Catherine Holstein, founder of Khaite, appears to be grappling with this conundrum. Her solutions this time around included puffy garments that looked like the unhappy offspring of Comme des Garçons and the Michelin Man; similarly unsettling were the thick braided organza tubes used to create bulbous tops. When she returned to her trusted playbook — her famously slouchy leather jacket, a long satin trench in a deliciously buttery cream, a narrow white dress with sheer panels and silky trousers peeking out from beneath the hem — the collection was on steadier ground.

The crowd at Khaite was as polished as a marble egg — I sat next to two women who were clearly keeping Cartier and Bulgari in business — so the youthful, naughty audience at Kim Shui provided a welcome tonic. The kids here were unembarrassed to show off rolls of rollicking flesh, undulating from atop jeans; overflowing brassieres hardly bigger than pasties. The runway was similarly frisky: fake snake pants were held together, barely, with laces; spiky white flowers encircled waists or were employed as bra tops. Filmy dresses could have begun life as demure Cholé-esque frocks, but the sullen gender-fluid wearer, desperately in search of a little fun — and maybe more than slightly inebriated — took a pair of scissors and eviscerated these garments, leaving them delightfully misshapen and ready for action.

There were no men in dresses at Carolina Herrera, where Wes Gordon presented a knowing treatise on haute bourgeois dressing. What cosseted grown-up has the life for these clothes, you wondered, suddenly feeling sludgy and sloppy, perched in your little chair waiting for the show to begin. The sleek parade of posh ranged from a one-sleeved lace dress secured with a gigantic blossom to a pink shirtwaist worthy of Grace Kelly sailing on the True Love. Though it seldom got kickier than the surfeit of polka dots, there was a bit of sly wit in the glitter that illuminated houndstooth mini-dresses, along with the welcome introduction of a pouffe of a black-cloud tulle jacket over toreador pants.

At his spectacular show outside Rockefeller Center — last season Beyonce, this season Madonna in the house! — Luar’s Raul López, another brilliant Latino, offered shoulders that managed to reconcile the warring concepts of sharp and distended; huge leather jackets were almost consumed by their curved sleeves. (Full disclosure: writing this up from the photos! This reporter raced home after Michael Kors to watch one of the most important debates in American history.)

At Meruert Tolegen, a beautiful show in a Gothic church across from Central Park, light coats featured wide Claudine collars and were sprinkled with — wait for it — glittery copper-coloured unicorns. No imaginary creatures animated the outerwear at Toteme: the pieces were rendered in a fetching cashmere-Lyocell blend, absent of collar and cuff, as austere as a school uniform at the University of The Row.

The concept of “see now, buy now,” once so promising, has apparently faltered — you don’t hear much about it anymore. Maybe that’s because it was hard to decide, say, immediately after a Burberry show in London, what you wanted to drop thousands of pounds on. So the revival of this idea at Batsheva was a surprise hit. The “see now” portion of the proceedings was a runway show without a runway — it took place in the middle of Elizabeth Street in front of the designer’s boutique, and the diverse models, all member of Batsheva’s expanded fashion family, held paddles with numbers, as if on an old-fashioned catwalk. The defiantly demure clothes — square necked jumpers whose low waist devolved into a swingy skirt; a ruffly black and white number decorated with narrow bows; a puffy black taffeta skirt — were immediately available inside the shop, so you could stroll by, watch the show, spend a few hundred dollars, and have something new to wear that night.

“Is this boat going anywhere?” a seatmate at Tommy Hilfiger wondered, as we sat on the wooden benches of a decommissioned Staten Island ferry listing in the waters off Pier 17 at South Street Seaport. Yup, this behemoth was heading straight to the nearest mall, where these Hilfiger fashions — jackets in Tommy’s trademark colour blocks; lanky Bermuda shorts; baggy sweaters emblazoned with anchors — would surely be right as home. Hilfiger himself described these clothes as “nautical, preppy, collegiate, all-American and modern,” and not just that — many of these items bore the letters TH. Unless your name is Trevor Howard, you might prefer your own initials, in which case — free consulting for the gang at Tommy! — why not install a monogrammer in the corner of each store, so the customer’s own initials can grace these cheery tees shirts and windbreakers?

If the Tommy cohort is spending summers at the Jersey shore, the Proenza Schouler woman is frequenting a far tonier resort. Still, the two houses share a love of seafaring signifiers. At Proenza, there were takes on multi-buttoned sailor pants and those flappy square collars that enliven middy shirts. The sporty striped dresses had an undeniable appeal, but some of the evening looks were heavy on notoriously hard-to-pull-off fringe and — even more challenging — in a few cases these were made of what appeared to be strips of studded leather.

Instead of a welter of fringe, Michael Kors made the case for raffia, a summer staple that turned up here in interesting ways. Copies of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera peeked from raffia handbags, a nod to the locales in Patricia Highsmith’s The Talented Mr. Ripley. The latest Netflix iteration of this tale, Kors said, influenced this darkly glamorous collection. In any case, the raffia wasn’t just confined to purses: there were also crocheted garments with raffia hems, raffia jackets, and even a full-on raffia skirt. The runway was decorated with faintly threatening boulders — the beach can also be a dangerous place! — that glowed in the gloom just before the lights came up.

Sometimes you don’t realise how much you didn’t miss something until it raises its ugly head again. When Tory Burch promulgated sweatpants, you immediately thought: “Ugh, Athleisure!” Mitigating the horror somewhat was the fact these items were pulled over quite appealing sequined maillots. If you drop these monsters on the sand (maybe someone would steal them?) and went for a dip, you could replace them with one of Burch’s long ruffle-y skirts, like the lovely white one that closed the show.

Once upon a time, long before they had had their own social media accounts, teenagers used to like to write on each other’s clothes, and scribble personal messages on toys — there was even a canvas animal that was called an autograph hound. This predilection dates back to at least the College Joes of the 1920s; if you hunt hard at vintage shows you might find one of these relics bearing faded messages, eerie missives from the past. Could Stuart Vevers at Coach have come across one of these survivors? (We know for a fact that Vevers loves a flea market.)

His show featured versions of these scrawled-upon artefacts, here decorating tees, sweatshirts, and handbags. Other totes winked at the famous Coach bags designed by the iconic mid-century American designer Bonnie Cashin, but this time around they were ridiculously gargantuan, and shaped like massive teddy bears. “I Love New York” pullovers, in at least one case artfully shredded, offered, perhaps unwittingly, a distinct metaphor for how so many of us feel about our beautiful, crazy hometown — and our valiant, tattered country.