Designers are inventing new ways of presenting their collections. Here, five digital artists explain how they realized virtual realities for the fall 2021 season.
This Alexander McQueen collection contained so many brustrokes of nuance and reference that you were left itching to hear the design rationale behind them unstitched. Sarah Burton’s team are well-prepped, welcoming, and good eggs in general, yet seeing a collection as rich as this without that creator’s take seems like listening to a song with great lyrics played instrumentally. The sparse release notes asserted a “focus on silhouette,” and once you got beyond top notes including the sweetly naif early abstract-aping papercut prints and nicely spliced hybrid garments that also featured heavily in women’s pre-fall, it was these experiments in outline that lingered most in the memory.
How do you sum up a four-decade career in 63 looks? In a COVID-free world, Michael Kors’s 40th would have been the biggest of fashion bashes with a celebrity-filled front row and a glam after-party. Instead, we watched from our computer screens this morning, living vicariously through Naomi Campbell, Helena Christensen, Carolyn Murphy, and Shalom Harlow, who vamped down 45th Street in sequins and double-face cashmere. In place of Champagne there was a Russ & Daughters care package, and absent his trademark jog around the runway, Kors gave a taped message announcing a money-raising drive for the Actors Fund: “The Broadway community has been suffering terribly since the shutdown,” he said.
Some brands model themselves off of a single idea, but Daisuke Obana’s N.Hoolywood is a two-in-one proposition divided into distinct collections: Compile and Test Product Exchange Service. The former focuses on minimalist menswear with dramatic flair, while the latter exudes a workwear-informed pragmatism.
With the world still reeling from a year of changes, Obana wanted his pieces for Compile to be fashion fail-safes. “You can layer the pieces any way and any order you want; you don’t need to think of the order when you put your clothes on,” he shared from Tokyo. The muted nature of the Compile separates will indeed make them easy to mix and match without much consideration. The tan half-trenches and baggy ’90s-style leather jackets would pair easily with his streamlined sweatpants or jodhpur-esque cropped trousers. Presented on masked dancers who resembled mannequins, the collection had a theatrical feel. COVID-19 has made the prospect of a runway show less than feasible
“People were complimenting me on my pieces but complained about the prices,” said Neil Barrett on a Zoom call from his headquarters in Milan. “My friends loved the collection but they couldn’t afford it. They kept saying, ‘Are you crazy? It’s too expensive!’” This is hardly just Neil Barrett’s problem: Prices at luxury fashion houses are more often than not outrageously high. But Barrett is obsessive about more than just getting every minute detail of his impeccable tailoring right. “I’ve always had the dream to make my label more inclusive and democratic,” he said. “I felt very strongly that I wanted to offer collections accessible to a larger audience. Finally, I succeeded.”