There were two awesome parties going on Saturday night. One was down in my hotel lobby at the Tribeca Grand. The other was in my head, a continual buzz of high after seeing a trio that had transplanted themselves to Milk Made.
For those not familiar with New York Fashion Week's schedule structure. Basically you have all the razzy dazzy shows up at the Lincoln Centre, a scattering of them dotted around galleries in Chelsea, a few off site shows in wildly downtown/uptown locations and then a concentration of cool happening at Milk Studios, what was formerly known as Mac Milk is now rebranded as Milk Made schedule. It's also the place where I happen to spend most of my NYFW week because season after season, they welcome up and coming designers into their fold and provide them with the infrastructure to put on a show or a presentation. You end up with a mix of semi-established, up and coming as well as static accessories designers showing their wares. It's a lot of bang for your buck basically.
On Saturday, Milk Made welcomed two new designers into their circle, both from out of town, not that it matters a jot. This is New York of course, city of opportunity and new beginnings. Calla from Paris (originally from Canada), Ostwald Helgason from London (originally from Iceland and Germany) join Dean Quinn, ex-resident of London (originally from Ireland) to form a trio of out-of-towners that together made my night. Search all of them on the sidebar to the right, and ye will find multiple posts on all of them dating back to the early days of Style Bubble when images were a lot smaller and words peppered with one too many exclamation mark.
Still, I feel like reverting to bad habits!!!!!!!! I was well and truly excited to see all of them evolve and excite the crowd in New York. The openness of the presentations basically means anybody who's vaguely interested can walk in and check it out, so there was a lot of raw enthusiasm with people bouncing from one room to the other on the eight floor.
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First up was Calla, whose feminine and abstracted digital prints I've always had a soft spot for. She hasn't strayed too far from that territory and if anything the Leith Clark's styling accentuated the girlish charm of Calla Haynes's print work which this season distorted wood grains and granite flecks so that they almost looked like florals from afar or torrid ink blots on wet paper. The wood grain background in the set, which also looked like a silk moire (a fabric which she has successfully used in the past) really boosted the static presentation and made you want to step right into this candy pink corner, mixing and matching Calla's prints. They work in tandem with one another or as solid monochramtic print too and with simple dresses, trousers and covetable items like a shearling biker jacket, adding to Calla's signature built-in bustier dress, this was a more than competent "Hello" to the New York crowd.
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Arguably, Dean Quinn's presentation caused the most fuss with the least number of silhouettes. Thirteen dresses that have reduced his eye from detailing from the overt to the subtle (see my early posts of Dean Quinn's graduate work and you shall find a giant leap from then and now). Zippers were the central motif here and gave the silk crepe dresses an energy, to take away any notions of mere red carpet material (although, I'm sure Quinn's work will find their way on to some starlet or another soon). Apparently, his S/S 12 collection has been flying off the racks in Barneys. This might have something to do with his smart pricing with nothing bieng over $1,000. That's pretty much a reasonable price when it comes to high-end designer dress leagues. I'm only slightly disappointed that his breakout didn't occur in London but still, New York have welcome him with open arms and it's working for him so I can only see an onward and upward rise from here on end.
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Ostwald Helgason are new to the Milk Made schedule and made a banging start with what I think is their best presentation yet. Their collections that are shown at the London Fashion Week exhibition have been quietly gaining momentum, picking up stockists like Opening Ceremony. I've already logged in a huge personal order for S/S 12 just because they seem to pick up on the oddest textural detailing and motifs. Last season it was cork and laminated dried hydrangeas. This season, it's nautical stripes and sea monsters. Looking at old antique maps and Nordic seafaring tales, Susanne Helgason and Invgar Ostwald honed in on the nautical stripe and spliced them into neat little shifts and flared hem skirts, adding unexpected colours that you might not associate with the oft-used nautical theme. The sea monsters appeared as an illustration on sweatshirts and some seriously covetable knitwear bulked out this precise collection. The waffle knits did have a Jonathan Saunders feel to them except the duo used effective colour combinations that really make them the sort of winter warmers that you'd wear over and over again.
