Best of New York Fashion Week Fall 2018

Surface is on the ground at New York Fashion Week. This season, as the men’s and women’s fall collections show back to back, we’ll be posting our favorite moments from various shows, presentations, and parties.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 14, 2018

Marc Jacobs

For Marc Jacobs, the runway is a theater. Hundreds of guests looked on as models in Cordovan hats and sharply cut, pigmented hair marched through the Park Avenue Armory enveloped in billowing cashmere, melton, silk faille, and moire. The elongated runway was flooded in sinister violet and pink light, compounding the drama of Jacob’s rich collection.

Maryam Nassir Zadeh

Hopeful fantasies of what one aspires to be often stands in sharp contrast with the reality that plays out in everyday life. Maryam Nassir Zadeh toggled between those worlds in her fall collection. Acid yellow, orange, and iridescent fabrics—intended to represent a dreamworld—were grounded with slate grey, soft blue, and deep burgundy materials.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 13, 2018

Grace Wales Bonner x Totokaelo

British menswear designer Grace Wales Bonner celebrated her spring collection at Totokaelo’s Lower Manhattan location with an installation by American artist Eric N. Mack. Delicate silk and cotton fabrics suspended from the ceiling of the former bank building created a fluid canopy over pieces on view.

Coach

Leave it to Stuart Vevers to merge the south side of Manhattan with the American Southwest. The designer showed his fall collection for Coach 1941—a mash up of mystical symbolism and dark metropolitan romance—on a moody Stefan Beckman-designed set. TV sets playing eerie videos of forest scenes were scattered about the fog-filled space.

Gabriela Hearst

Gabriela Hearst’s fall 2018 runway show at Cafe Altro Paradiso in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood marked the debut of her tenth collection. Garments worn by Victorian-era female coal miners and female factory workers from the World Wars inspired the structured silhouettes made from supple materials—including cashmere sourced from Manos Del Uruguay, a fair trade organization dedicated to economic and social development in the Uruguayan countryside.

Vaquera

Since arriving on the New York circuit in 2013, David Moses, Patric DiCaprio, Claire Sully, and Bryn Taubensee—the four designers behind Vaquera—have amassed a following of both top-tier editors and young guns. This season, the collective presented a bold, colorful collection that explored the shifts between faith and uncertainty.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 2018

Zero + Maria Cornejo

Maria Cornejo’s foray into fashion began in London, where she studied design and textiles in the ’80s. Celebrating her label’s 20th anniversary this year, the Chilean designer returned to those early years by celebrating the colors of English tartan plaid. Luxurious needlecord and jacquard fabrics in poppy red and electric blue animated asymmetrical, sculptural silhouettes.

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 2018

Sies Marjan

A former pupil of the master colorist Dries Van Noten, Sies Marjan’s Sander Lak saturated his fall collection with a rich gradient scale of violets, red, blues, and sea-foam green. Elegant metallic finishes rounded off the collection, giving intricate pleating and fluid draping an ethereal glow.

Rosetta Getty

Each of Rosetta Getty’s collections engages in dialogue with a female artist’s work. For fall, the designer showed her collection among works by New York–based Argentinian painter and sculptor Analia Saban. The artist’s innovative interpretation of materials—as seen in her “Draped Concrete” (2016), where slabs of cracked concrete hang over a wooden sawhorse—pushed Getty to reinterpret the techniques and silhouettes her label is known for.

Nanushka

Sandra Sandor’s home country Hungary is a meeting point for Eastern and Western cultures. The Turkish, Soviet, and Germanic influences that have shaped the the region’s sartorial identity appear in Sandor’s fall collection for Nanushka. Structured denim, babouche slippers, and long-line jacket styled as a dress inspired by turn-of-the-century Hungarian artists living in Paris embody the designer’s hometown, Budapest.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2018

Pyer Moss

Too often, the history of American people of color are glazed over. Pyer Moss designer Kerby Jean-Raymond dug into the stories of little-known, 19th-century black cowboys in his fall collection. The inspiration manifested in wide-leg denim trousers, a nod to rodeo pants, and leather jackets with snap fastenings and Western stitching.

Eckhaus Latta

Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta carried the polished tailoring from their spring collection forward in their fall runway show. The bicoastal designers showed immaculately cut denim jackets and top coats with exaggerated collars and lapels alongside vibrant statement knits.

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2018

Telfar

As opposed to holding a runway show or presentation, Telfar Clemens (center), winner of the 2017 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, hosted a concert with performances by the likes of Kelela, Dev Hynes, and Kelsey Lu. Each musician, dressed in a look by Clemens, modeled his fall collection.

Edie Parker

Brett Heyman’s accessories label Edie Parker often gets lumped into the category of evening bags. This season, the designer challenged that notion at her presentation at The Harvard Club in Midtown Manhattan by having models in looks spanning from day to evening carry bags from her fall collection.

Linder

Overcoming the male gaze is one of fashion’s most prevalent challenges. Sam Linder faces the issue by looking to Artemis, the virgin goddess of the hunt known for eschewing male dominance, as the guiding force behind his fall womenswear collection. Models in garments inspired by pagan priestesses, seers, and healers walked through the chapel at St. Mark’s Church-In-The-Bowery carrying accessories that allude to crystal balls and bow and arrow.

Jason Wu

Jewel tone colors, sumptuous micro pleating, and bright crystals converge in Jason Wu’s fall collection. The designer’s refined aesthetic brings a much needed couture sensibility to New York’s fashion discourse.

Opening Ceremony x Azuma Makoto

Humberto Leon and Carol Lim unveiled a limited range of Azuma Makoto works—various plants and fungi hand positioned and preserved in acrylic—at Opening Ceremony’s Manhattan location on Howard Street. The Japanese botanical sculptor is known best in the fashion community for his awe-inspiring set pieces at Dries Van Noten’s spring 2017 runway show.

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2018

Snow Xue Gao

Chinese designer Snow Xue Gao held her fall runway show at Jin Fong Restaurant located in Manhattan’s Chinatown. Her collection was influenced by the phenomena of pajama dressing and the mixing of Western and Eastern garments, as seen in the neighborhood’s markets.

Ulla Johnson

Romantic notions in ready-to-wear—like bow bandeaux tops, A-line skirts, and ruffles—often feel tired. Ulla Johnson offers a fresh take on these design elements, blurring the lines between dressing for day and night by focusing on well-crafted garments tailored to a modern woman’s needs.

Adidas Originals by Daniëlle Cathari

In 2017, Dutch designer Daniëlle Cathari sent looks made out of Adidas Originals tracksuits down the Vfiles runway. A year later, the designer is back with a capsule collection designed in collaboration with the German brand, presented on a jungle gym–like installation.

Haus Alkire

Models sauntered about Roll & Hill—the furniture and lighting studio in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood—at Jason and Julie Alkire’s fall presentation. Perhaps a gesture to the work of American taxidermist and artist Carl Akeley (who was a point of reference for the Alkires this season), the duo draws attention to the neck with dramatic proportions.

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 7, 2018

Raf Simons

Raf Simons referenced Flemish still-life paintings at his fall runway show by covering an elevated stage in fresh fruit, bottles of wine, cured meats, bread, and cheese. Titled “Youth In Motion,” the collection shifts between grandeur and reality by simultaneously referencing midcentury couture salons and the streets of Cold War-era Berlin.

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 6, 2018

Christian Dior x Sasha Pivovarova

Supermodel-cum-artist Sasha Pivovarova filled a venue in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District with more than forty pieces of original art in various mediums to celebrate Christian Dior’s spring 2018 collection. Among them was an installation, titled “Life Session,” featuring portraits dripping down a wall.

N.Hoolywood

Daisuke Obana, creative director of the cult Japanese menswear label, N.Hoolywood, delivered a collection rooted in workwear with influences from vintage Issey Miyake designs. Typographic prints with words like”organize” and “genuine” nod to American labor-class movements.

Feng Chen Wang

Hailing from Shanghai, working out of London, and showing her menswear collection in New York, Feng Chen Wang relies on tactile comfort for a sense of home. In turn, the designer created plush, white sofas and beds for the center of her runway.

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2018

Willy Chavarria

Willy Chavarria is often mistaken as a designer who makes “tough guy” clothes. For fall, the designer wrapped models in light yet warm Peruvian yarns—like baby alpaca wool fashioned into workwear-inspired silhouettes that acknowledge working-class America.

Bode

Emily Adams Bode held her fall presentation, titled “Dear Homer,” on a set that mimicked the inside of a greenhouse. Based on her interactions with a botanist turned quilt dealer, the collection references the different stages of his life.