CAAFD Emerging Designers Outshine During NYFW S/S20 Collective Showcase

The Council of Aspiring American Fashion Designers yet again unveiled various emerging brands during New York Fashion Week.  CAAFD welcomed six thoroughly screened, approved and selected brands from around the globe representing their country of residence or origin. Among the newly selected and returning brands were:  Moon Chang, A Humming Way, Farida Temraz’s Temraza, María Sonia, Yufash and Phoenix Ba. Collectively the brands showcased their spring/summer 20 collections after each other. Individually, the brands exquisitely showcased their unique work of art and passion, exhibiting mix of bright colors, elegance, flare, couture,  and some edgy. With a fully packed, standing room only, six designers showcased at one sitting. Fashion professionals and celebrities among the audience waited patiently as each brand took their turn to grace the runway.   

Egyptian designer Farida Temraz opens the show,  presented her couture brand 'Temraza' with flare and elegance. Though the designer has made quite a name for herself in the red carpet circuit in the previous two-three years, this was Farida Temraz's first being listed on the official fashion week schedule as part of CAAFD newly selected Designer and she did not disappoint. With a total of 24 pieces, the collection consisted of evening gowns, cocktail dresses, and bridal couture. The color palette picked by the designer was mostly pastel with the occasional electric blue and white seen in a couple of pieces. Temraza's common thread was the floral element which Farida Temraz used in almost all her pieces, giving them a refined and elegant touch. She presented with two bridal options - a trumpet gown with a halter illusion neckline with off-shoulder sleeves and a ball gown with ruffled sleeves completed with a veil. The gowns provided with a wonderful contrast between the modern and the traditional.

Phoenix Ba Spring/Summer 20 Floral Motifs Collection Exhibited Majesty. The Toronto based designer presented 15 pieces in her collection and showed surface textile techniques in her collection. Her opening piece was a double-breasted dress with floral motifs on warm tones. The collection consisted of evening wear with A-line and sheath gowns. There were also a couple of skirts, a pair of pants with a tube frill top along with a floral jumpsuit. She incorporated the floral theme throughout the collection as each piece had intricate floral work in it. A lot of different materials were used like mesh and tassels in a couple of pieces. Phoenix Ba's love for hair accessories was also on display as each model walked with floral hair bands or other floral hair accessories matching their outfits. Her finale piece saw a model in a peplum top and pleated skirt walking down the runway. 

Paraguayan Fashion Designer Maria Sonia Shines Bright with Colorful Silhouettes  - Her Spring/Summer 20 brings ‘hope’ to the mood and climate of the world. Think of Spring and every bright color that comes with it. And that is exactly what you will find on the runway for the Maria Sonia Showcasing at the NYFW. The CAAFD approved designer presented a collection of 15 pieces. The colorful collection has been inspired by the designer's roots and the scenario was quite different from what you generally expect at a fashion show's runway. The models walked boldly, freely on the runway, lifting their trains and showing them to the audience. It was a rhythmic dance as the model twirled around to fully show their outfits. Maria Sonia wanted to focus on the evolution and empowerment of women and on the runway, she did just that. Her collection was bright and playful. It consisted mostly of gowns and cocktail dresses. Though the silhouettes were mostly structured, there was a sense of free flow in Maria Sonia's pieces. It was topped off with the floral head fans which could be spotted on all the models. Overall, it was fun and vibrant. Looked like spring had finally arrived! 

Yufash Spring/Summer 20 showcased unisex collection. The designer exhibited a mix of casual, dressy and evening wears with simplicity in mind.  We saw men with t-shirts with bold shining prints and the ladies with glowing evening wears with technology influenced prints. The kind that when the light goes off you become the attention of the room as though you weren’t already noticed. Using various colors from dull to the brightest you can find on the color spectrum, Yufash brand executed elegance with minimalism. The long blue dress and the orange finale dress were few of our favorites.  The designer, Kadri Klampe is an Estonian-born, founder and designer who created Yufash as a unique and forward-thinking brand made for the confident and powerful women of the world, with all garments fabricated exclusively in England. Founded in 2015, Klampe and Yufash have since experience skyrocketing popularity, including having designs featured on the hit television series Scream Queens. Yufash is one of the few designers chosen as part of the CAAFD’s incubate/nurturing program, returning for her second seasonal showcase after her previous career-defining CAAFD showcases. 

A Humming Way Spring/Summer 20 Collection Met with Warmth and Excitement During CAAFD NYFW.  An Indian brand inspired by the old world regalia of the state of Rajasthan in India. With the support of CAAFD, this was the first time that the designer brand was showcasing their collection at the New York Fashion Week. The collection was titled "Matsutake," and represented the mushroom's characteristics of adaptability with utmost brilliance. Matsutake is also known to spread a feeling of hope and that is what Sweta Agarwal tried to emit through her showcasing. The collection had 14 pieces in total. It had a mix of cocktail dresses, gowns and jumpsuits all in a palette of soft pink, browns, gray and white. The collection had a lot of mirrors work to trace the roots from which the designer label began. A humming Way's entire collection was soothing and quite welcoming. 

Moon Chang, the brand to close the show, presented their Spring/Summer 20 Collection leaving audiences in Awe. Her Collection was titled, "Hybrid Beauty." It showed Moon Chang's personal journey during the time she was going through PTSD. The mood was set with the haunting yet musical music being played in the background. The models make-up was done in a way to make their eyes look swollen. She presents a collection of 11 pieces with the focus color being black. Moon Chang described how she survived the death situation with the words "Being Cute." In her collection, she incorporates cuteness with the use of ribbons, ruffles, and flowers. The cute elements with her oversized dresses created a contrast of cuteness in ugly places which is what the designer wanted to show through her collection. Moon Chang, as one of CAAFD favorite brands never disappointed. Her presentation were met me one word sentence, “WOW”.

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Tom Ford NYFW SPRING 2020 READY-TO-WEAR

How many times have you heard that the streets of New York are a runway? Well, the same is true of the subway, only maybe more so. There’s glamour and grit down there, same as above ground, but down below there’s a captive audience.

Tom Ford is the new chairman of the CFDA, and after starting in June his first move was to shorten New York Fashion Week. Simultaneous with the consolidation, designers have been producing more experiential events. We’ve seen bands, modern dancers, and a 75-person choir this week, but only Ford arranged for a private viewing of a disused platform of the Bowery stop on the J/Z line lit an electric pink for the occasion. Many of his 180 guests were surely subway first-timers, but the regular commuters got a big kick out of it too.

What is Mr. Slick doing in the subway? Ford’s notes made mention of the famous shot of Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick emerging out of a manhole cover. The subway also jibes with his new-since-last-season interest in simplicity. “I think that it’s a time for ease,” he wrote, “and in that way a return to the kind of luxurious sportswear that America has become known for all over the world.”

Enter look one: a jersey scoop-neck tee with the short sleeves rolled up to the shoulders and a duchesse satin skirt so white it was beaming. Not exactly subway-safe, it was low-key fabulous and synthesized the compelling high-low essence of the collection. Or consider another example: satin blazers cut characteristically strong and worn with elastic-waist nylon basketball shorts. “These torture me,” Ford wrote of the shorts, pointing out that he doesn’t let his son Jack wear them, even though his classmates do. “I’m always fascinated by things that ‘torture me.’” Ford didn’t play it completely contrary, though. The molded plastic tops were a luscious homage to Yves Saint Laurent’s Lalanne breastplates via Issey Miyake. And Ford’s tailored men’s jackets were typically loud and louche.

Connecting with one of the key messages of the season so far—let’s call it the nearly naked trend, for now—Ford threw a dress coat over a leather bra, cut a jumpsuit so it fell open to expose a strappy bikini top, and sent out a pair of slinky maillots. Of course, the millennial designers doing the same have probably been studying Ford’s old Gucci shows. That legacy of great American sportswear Ford was talking about? He has a stake in it. What’s new is old, that’s just how fashion works. Credit Ford, he’s expanding his vocabulary.

Source: VogueRunway

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Gypsy Sport NYFW SPRING 2020 READY-TO-WEAR

Life is not always a beach for young designers trying to make it in fashion, and Rio Uribe of Gypsy Sport would know. Over the past six years he’s successfully navigated the changing tides of the industry, running a fully independent business with unwavering commitment. Still, when it’s all work and no play, there’s not much room left for creative daydreaming. Which is why, these days, Uribe is making a conscious effort to make more time for himself. With palms tree lining the runway, that joyous out-of-office attitude was in the air at his show today. Showgoers at the rooftop venue were clearly feeling the vibe, too, and sipped on fruit cocktails in the warm Indian summer evening.

The sunset tangerine and canary yellow palette of the clothes spoke directly to a permanent vacation mood. Shimmying out while covered in sparkling gold body paint, the first model set the tone, flaunting a party-starting halter-neck dress fashioned from hundreds of beaded safety pins. That ingenious approach to chainmail is one Uribe has been evolving for the past few seasons and is proving surprisingly popular despite—or perhaps because of—its unabashed fashion-forward sensibility.

Uribe made sustainability part of his agenda early on and is now focused on honing signature DIY archetypes. An update on the terrific denim he showed for Spring 2019, the new jeans had an appealing tropical look thanks to the appliqué hibiscus flowers. The safety pin-studded Bermuda shorts were a showstopper when they were first worn by rapper Rico Nasty last season and are likely to be a hit in this new one. In a moment when the notion of luxury is being reevaluated altogether, Uribe’s soulful one-of-a-kind pieces are a sunny proposition.

Source: VogueRunway

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3.1 Phillip Lim NYFW SPRING 2020 READY-TO-WEAR

It has been years since Phillip Lim staged a coed show and he marked the occasion by choosing a new venue for Spring 2020: an open-air warehouse in Greenpoint. Despite the agonizing traffic to and from the Brooklyn neighborhood—this reviewer barely made it in time from the Lower East Side—the vibe mirrored that of his Spring collection: urban yet somehow tranquil. Backstage, Lim was talking about his brand’s values—community, diversity, optimism—and his efforts to pare things back and create items with a clear purpose.

His experiments with tailoring were Spring’s highlights. You won’t find a conventional two-piece suit here; there are enough of those to go around, for starters, and Lim saw an opportunity to create something different for his clients. His most intriguing proposition was a sleeveless, elongated vest with a detachable piece draped around the shoulders, sort of like a scarf; styled with matching trousers or a flow-y midi skirt, the combination was boundary pushing without being too outré for a typical New York office. (Lim knows precisely who his customers are: working women across a variety of fields.) The same was true of an asymmetrical blazer with sleek cutouts and a detachable hood, as well as a jacket shown with a leather bandana—a clever accessory wearers will be happy to play around with.

It might sometimes seem like there is no rhyme or reason in the fashion industry. Many fashions come and go. But the right skirt can stand the test of time. It can also help you create occasion-appropriate outfits of many different types. Nowhere is that more evident than with the many denim fashions and styles you can find while skirt shopping. Many denim skirts are easily styled differently by using different jewelry, shoes and accessories, so you can dress them up or down. If you choose a denim skirt of a length and shape that looks good on your body, you can then use it with many other pieces already in your closet on a consistent basis. That means the skirt and the other pieces in your closet will have more value and usability.

Earlier this summer, Lim debuted a Resort collection that was 40 percent sustainable thanks to new organic and recycled fabrics. He continued those efforts here, pointing out the compact organic cotton of a chocolate brown jumpsuit and the coated cupro of a navy midi dress. It had a liquid-y gleam from afar, like heavyweight satin, and in photos it reads almost as leather, but cupro is made from upcycled cotton waste. Materials aside, designing with intention is a smaller yet crucial part of the sustainability conversation. By nixing the unnecessary bells and whistles, Lim hopes to create pieces with serious longevity. Any designer can source better fabrics, but few can resist the urge to complicate their clothes. Going forward, it would be great to see Lim become a louder voice in the sustainability conversation; as he enters his 15th year in business, it will be an important part of maintaining his momentum and staying competitive with the very woke new guard.

Source: VogueRunway

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Helmut Lang NYFW SPRING 2020 READY-TO-WEAR

Not far from where Mark Thomas and Thomas Cawson staged their second runway show for Helmut Lang the brand today, an exhibition of Helmut Lang the man’s latest artwork was opening. Lang walked away from his company 15 years ago, and in the interim, it’s gone through its fair share of incarnations. Perhaps because of the significant amount of time that’s passed or maybe because of the recent success of the reissue concept, Thomas and Cawson are taking a very faithful approach to their reimagining of this famous label.

The reissue is a divisive concept. On the one hand, it’s a clever way to address youthful FOMO, on the other, it’s a design cop-out that doesn’t push the conversation forward. The pros see smart money and the cons insist fashion must reflect the present situation or it risks becoming costume. As with so many things, there’s a generational divide. The olds raise an eyebrow, but the youngs turn up in droves. Today, Jeremy O. Harris, Maisie Williams and her new boyfriend Reuben Selby, Charlie Plummer, Lucky Blue Smith, Selah Marley, and Paloma Elsesser all sat in the front row.

Millennials, it would seem, are the target customers. But in fact, what Thomas and Cawson are up to looks good enough that the Helmut faithful might be intrigued. Absent a few dresses that read too sweet, this was an accurate accounting of Lang’s signatures: the minimal tailoring, the utilitarian parkas, the sheer elements, the chromed leather, the touch of latex kink, the denim shapes. Reproducing the electricity of anticipation that used to course through Lang’s show spaces is a much harder trick to pull off. And it’s probably not fair to ask it of Thomas and Cawson. Lang was an original.

Source: VogueRunway

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Tomo Koizumi NYFW SPRING 2020 READY-TO-WEAR

“I want to make something that is not commercial,” said Tomo Koizumi before his Spring 2020 show. The designer, who caught the eye of Katie Grand on Instagram six months ago and subsequently flew to New York one week later for his debut, felt no inhibitions about so boldly bucking the trends of the American fashion landscape. He has set up shop in Marc Jacobs’s atelier and uses Jacobs’s Madison Avenue store for his shows, and in this, he has become a spiritual successor to Jacobs’s fashion for fashion’s sake mantra of late. Koizumi’s clothes are more costume than ready-to-wear, intended to provoke and inspire. To make the point, he cast model Ariel Nicholson in a one-woman show in which she dressed and undressed in seven garments, twirling and gasping to the ambient tunes that echoed throughout the store.

As a display of fashion, it was breathtaking. Nicholson, the 18-year-old trans model and Raf Simons muse, projected well beyond a full painted face of glitter and a conehead ’do. As attendants dressed and undressed her in Koizumi’s ombré ensembles, she oohed and aahed, trying to keep the audience enthralled. No disrespect to her performance, but the structure and fabrications of the garments were enough.

All seven are made of hundreds of meters of ruffled Japanese polyester organza and utilize only one zipper. The construction is fascinating, with the ruffles backed by a cloth lining, suspended above each other like cascades of cake frosting. The silhouettes were pushed far beyond those of Koizumi’s debut, with jumpsuits, bodysuits, and ballooning sleeves layered under scarves of ruffles and bows. The designer said he chose the bow motif because he wanted the collection to represent his gift back to the people who made him. “I just want to bring joy,” he said simply. Mission achieved.

Source: VogueRunway

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Elie Tahari NYFW SPRING 2020 READY-TO-WEAR

Inspired by the vibes of 1970s Soho, Elie Tahari’s collection at NYFW September 2019 emits an electric energy that melds the industrial and creative worlds into one. As an ode to The City That Never Sleeps, textures and patterns evoke a vibe that contrasts urban with artistic, lighting the stage with a vibrancy that can only be described as “New York.”

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