If there was one takeaway from New York Fashion Week, the semi-annual runway extravaganza that ended yesterday, it’s that confident glamour was in command. With inspirations ranging from Truman Capote’s swans and Carolyn Bessette Kennedy to C-suite execs, the dominant look for fall is post-pandemic polished, authoritative and sexy.
That means slick suiting, luscious leathers, bustiers, day-into-night dresses and trench coats over everything.
More than 70 designers paraded their fall 2024 wares over six days in venues ranging from an Upper East Side mansion and a FiDi skyscraper to a Bushwick warehouse. Boss ladies took to the front rows, with Beyoncé and her mother Tina Knowles making a surprise appearance at Luar in Brooklyn to watch Solange’s son Julez Smith make his runway debut. Heavy hitters Blake Lively, Demi Moore, Janet Jackson, Queen Latifah, Katie Holmes, Diane Kruger and Danai Gurira were also spotted at events.
All-American Tommy Hilfiger staged the most exuberant show of the week in Grand Central’s iconic Oyster Bar, with a high-spirited performance by Jon Batiste. Even the most jaded fashion followers leapt up and boogied between the tables.
In his sophomore outing for Helmut Lang, creative director Peter Do offered up tough takes on the founder’s iconic suits, cargo pants and ballistic vests. He even drafted original Lang muse Kirsten Owen to stalk the catwalk.
One of the hottest tickets of the week was Ludovic de Saint Sernin, the French gender-agnostic designer who once put “Euphoria” actress Hunter Schafer in a top made of a single feather and a low-rise skirt. Going head-to-head with the Super Bowl in his entrée to New York, he unveiled sheer tops and “butt cleavage” low leather pants. The NSFW collection was a collaboration with the Robert Mapplethorpe foundation.
Also competing with the Super Bowl was outlier Elena Velez, a Wisconsonite who aims to unsettle. After last fall’s controversial mud-wrestling fight that splattered several fashion buyers and journalists, she held a “Gone with the Wind”-themed salon in a Fifth Ave. manse. Guests heard a symposium on Margaret Mitchell’s civil war epic, which bears a trigger warning for racist content. The rabble-rousing designer – who was just named one of the 2024 LVMH Prize semifinalists – presented corseted and ruffled antebellum “couture.”
Although supermodels were scarce this season – Kaia Gerber and Gigi and Bella Hadid sat this one out – both Emily Ratajkowski and Irina Shayk strutted their stuff.
There was no shortage of mature beauties on the runway. Veronica Webb sashayed for Sergio Hudson, Alva Chinn dazzled at Naeem Khan and Batsheva Hay cast only 40-plus women in her Batsheva show, including Molly Ringwald, Ione Skye and poet/lawyer Vanessa Place.
Formula One legend and former Ferrari driver Michael Schumacher, 55, has lived a reclusive life with his family away from the glare of the spotlight since his skiing accident in 2013…
East Preston feels an unlikely stronghold of benefits dependency. The genteel village on the West Sussex coast might be the closest thing that Britain has to a moneyed pensioner utopia.
Former Loose Woman Carol McGiffin has opened up with her true thoughts about Ruth Langsford and Eamonn Holmes' split - two people she is friends with and admits she 'loves' equally
Amanda Holden has claimed that the British public don't "really care" about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle and argued the press make "too much" of the couple's moves
Katie Price has proudly shown off her new body online after underoing the knife for a whopping 17th time, but this time to make her boobs smaller for the first time
BBC Breakfast face a huge broadcast blunder on Saturday morning's show and long-standing host Charlie Stayt was forced to apologise to viewers for the sound mishap
Grandfather Robert Blackstock, a retired engineer from Nottinghamshire, became the “Brenda from Bristol” of this election campaign when he asked Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer during Wednesday night’s TV debate: “Are you two really the best we’ve got to be the next prime minister of our great country?”