If the audience at the Public School show had exited the venue in a slow, single-file line, it wouldn’t have been so different from the collection that walked the runway. The weather was bone-chilling to the point that the mayor told all of New York City to stay inside, so the fashion crowd faced the elements in their coats — preferably with some degree of fur — worn over more coats and lug-sole footwear. Survive in your aggressively styled, street-influenced layers. The message echoed in Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne’s fall collection.
That meant their compilations of oversize, athletic outerwear, sweeping tailoring and utility gear is relevant and resonating. It also meant the idea is not so new. Chow and Osborne weren’t static about it, though. They kept things fresh with a few bold fuchsia and rust combinations to jolt all the abundance of black, and worked in knit coats and big jeans with raw, fringed finishes that brought a worked-on hand to the lineup. The post-apocalyptic tarp-like capes were a little silly — let’s face it, times aren’t that tough for those buying advanced contemporary — but the rugged shearlings looked cool and quite warm.