Monse, meet Oscar. In the ever-changing wackadoodle industry event known as New York Fashion Week, designers Fernando Garcia and Laura Kim showed the two collections they design on the same runway, back to back. Monse, which is partially funded by Oscar de la Renta the company, came first.
Age-wise, it was appropriate. Monse is just a few years old, the creative child of Garcia and Kim when they left de la Renta after Peter Copping was appointed designer. Monse represents youthful rebellion, disruption of the status quo. The tweed suits and ladylike crisp white shirts and trousers pulled apart, folded back, belted helter skelter.
Their design chops were apparent — they were schooled under de la Renta himself, after all, for years. And Monse is the marriage of two worlds: Uptown and downtown, as the cliché goes. But there’s nothing midtown about the deconstruction of military drab spun from silk and trimmed in fur and sequins.
Even evening was approached with a tongue-in-cheek attitude. Velvet, charmeuse, satin, sequins, fur — the hallmarks and benchmarks of a luxe lady’s look were thoroughly punked up with black leather pants, thick studded belts, asymmetric ruching, kaleidoscopic stripes and so on.
While some of it felt a little too much like an obvious anti-parent stance, taking on two collections in a season (let alone a night — but this was their choice) is a lot, and Garcia and Kim need time to settle into the routine. The final evening dresses, sequined velvet dresses inspired by Pat Steir’s dripping paint pieces, hinted at interesting things to come — and we don’t just mean the following Oscar show.
By Nandini D’Souza Wolfe
From: Harper’s BAZAAR US
See more of the latest coverage from the New York Fashion Week fall/winter 2017 shows here.
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