What most conversations about New York Fashion Week miss, is that with some top names not on the schedule, the city, and the official CFDA calendar, have become a playground for independent and emerging designers. Every season there’s a newcomer to discover. (Recent breakouts include Colleen Allen, Zoe Gustavia Anna Whalen, and Jane Wade.) This has helped New York regain its reputation as a place where talent is born. To those who say New York has lost its sparkle, we ask, which shows are you going to? Because there’s terrific fashion in New York City, if you know where to look.
What these four up-and-comers have in common is that their work visualizes the world ahead: From Grace Gui’s reflection on sustainability to Yamil Arbaje and Angelo Beato’s examination of society’s power structures at Leblanc Studios—these designers may currently have more questions than answers, but isn’t that how most great stories begin? Scroll through to discover their work.
Grace Gui’s Novel Sustainable Knitwear Asks What Are We Leaving Behind for the Next Generation?
Sustainability is a subject that often comes up in fashion, with various degrees of authenticity, so the first thing you need to know about Brooklyn-based knitwear designer Grace Gui is that she raises her own silk worms. “My grandmother and I started raising them when I was about 5,” she recalled at her presentation, adding that it’s not uncommon in Asian American communities. “There’s a WeChat group in every town with a silk worm dealer. We used to go behind the Costco and she’d throw me up into the tree to pick Mulberry leaves to feed the worms. We used the silk cocoons to wash our faces.” The rest of her materials she sources from nearby farms in the tri-state area—at her presentation, a sheet posted next to each of her model tableaux included detailed breakdowns of the provenance of each fiber (all from female farmers), dye (all natural dyes), and embellishment. A knitted boatneck t-shirt with a red and green diamond design on the front and ultra-low rise flared trousers were identified as “100% cotton sourced Lyndhurst, NJ; 50/50 Silk Merino deadstock, from Peru; 100% Alpaca from New York, NY; Iron (III) oxide from the soil; Natural Rubber Latex sourced from New York, NY.” The 21-year old designer is still in school—she’s studying knitwear business and bio-textiles at Gallatin. She calls her project “farm-to-fashion.”
But a new and interesting way of sourcing materials does not a great collection make, and Gui’s clothes really reflect the way the young people of her generation get dressed. As detailed above, there is an emphasis on the everyday with easy t-shirts, elastic waist trousers, and jackets and skirts with more playful details and embellishments; and for evening, her experiments with more sculptural shapes and sheerness are also spot-on. At her presentation, a young girl of about 7 or 8 held a tiny, stylish bag in her hands. “The bag is 3D-printed with cornstarch and sugarcane, the bottom is made from repurposed fishing line and inside is all the waste from the whole collection,” she explained. “When we talk about [sustainability] we’re asking, are we going to push the weight of our weight onto our children? Who will carry your inheritance?”—Laia Garcia-Furtado
Pipenco: Rewriting Dracula With a Tall Tale of “Melancholic Opulence”
Nosferatu’s mark on fall fashion—in the form of Victoriana—is as clear as a bite on the neck. Dracula himself, in Cat in the Hat headgear and feathers, made a dramatic appearance at Lorena Pipenco’s show. The collection was a reimagining of the dark tale, based on the Romanian versions she heard growing up. In those, the designer wrote, Dracula was not just a “villian, but a man lost in longing while the women in his wake were cast as muses, frozen in time.” Pipenco’s mission was to rewrite these women into history—in a big way.
When the models came out in huge, often bulbous, dresses and surreal club-kid shoes, made in collaboration with East Village Shoe Repair, the room seemed to shrink to dollhouse proportions. Exaggerated sizes and shapes are defining characteristics of Pipenco’s work. The fit of the clothes, which is often “off” has the effect, she explained, of “almost enlarging our perception of” the wearer. These are clothes as armor meant to create “a powerful moment for the model.”
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