Sitting in a verdant community garden on the Lower East Side on a warm sunny September day, watching models ducking in and out of trees, past a gently tinkling harp.…What’s not to love?
Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta created a moment of green joy at New York Fashion Week on Saturday afternoon amid the chaos of the city and the world.
Their clothes were fanciful but wearable. A glinting foil tie crop top atop wide-legged bouclé sweatpants, curve-hugging ribbon knit dresses, and clever court shoes with toadstool-shaped heels all had an earthy, arty elegance that marked a new high in terms of elevated dressing for the brand built on denim.
The designers have gotten delightfully experimental with knitwear, and this season used a bubble stitch of varying sizes on all sorts of pieces, including a chubby tank in celery green that resembled an art assemblage, worn with a side slit mini. Long, knotted and fringed body-hugging gowns, and pant skirts were also standouts.
The season’s utility players were vivid two-tone wide-legged jeans; Y2K trendy color-blocked cropped cardigans, tanks and minis, and not-your-average jersey cutout dresses, slit in unexpected places to reveal the curve of the thigh, or impose a cool geometry onto the shoulders, as seen on the artist Martine Syms, whose presence on the runway says a lot about Eckhaus Latta. It’s fashion and so much more, and it keeps getting better and better.