Fun, spectacle at New York Fashion Week on day 2
NEW YORK (AP) — New York Fashion Week kicked into high gear on its second day, with celebrities dotting audiences at the Lincoln Center tents and elsewhere in Manhattan.
There was whimsy at Peter Som's Spring-Summer 2015 show, and a night earlier, spectacle and celebrity at Gareth Pugh's happening.
Among the highlights:
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PETER SOM
A favorite of first lady Michelle Obama, Peter Som ramped up the fun early Friday, with olive green in broad stripes and bold florals on his New York Fashion Week runway.
Som transitioned from easy living dresses, flouncy short skirts and sturdy jackets and coats for day to a series of gold lame looks for evening, offering a youthful flourish with flowery appliques on numerous outfits.
Fourteen-year-old Willow Shields, who plays Primrose Everdeen in the "Hunger Games," counted the three-dimensional applique among her favorite things from Som as she attended her first-ever fashion show — in grown-up heels!
"I'm getting better in heels, but they still hurt," she laughed.
The playful mood of Som's collection continued with colorful aprons wrapped around floral-print shirtdresses, a sleeveless top in with a fluttery, oversized back ruffle, and roomy T-shirts in snake prints in light pink and white.
Som turned to Christian Louboutin and his signature red soles for comfortable leather flat sandals in white, black and silver.
Shields, wearing a black Som outfit, explained how she likes the way the designer "mixes different things," like leather and the sewn-on flowers.
"That gives it a bit of a grungy look, but then there's flowers and that gives it a girly look," she said. "Balancing that is fun."
—Leanne Italie
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GARETH PUGH
There are fashion shows that focus purely on the clothes to be sold. Then there are the shows that lean more toward concept, toward image, toward performance.
And then there are shows like Gareth Pugh's splashy happening Thursday night at New York Fashion Week, a so-called "live immersive fashion experience" held in a cavernous space on the East River that normally houses seven gleaming basketball courts.
Pugh, the avant-garde British designer who usually shows in Paris, shrouded the premises in darkness and fog (billowing from strategically placed machines.) Giant video projections displayed everything from clouds and tornadoes to exotically clad figures. And there were dancers — live ones — writhing and churning, and wearing very little.
The only thing missing: Clothes, as in, what is Pugh suggesting that we wear next spring? It was hard to spot a single garment that might be actually, like, for sale one day.
As attendees — including celebrity guests like Maggie Gyllenhaal, Sarah Jessica Parker, Adrian Grenier and model Coco Rocha — entered the premises of Basketball City, an impressive sports facility housed in a giant warehouse on the river, waiters were at the ready with glasses of white wine and wild mushroom hors d'oeuvres. There were two large open bars. The huge space had been transformed into a dark club — no wooden basketball floors or hoops to be seen. Once the show began, three performance spaces had the crowd rushing from one to the other.
Will Pugh, 32, who has dressed celebrities like Lady Gaga, become more of a presence in New York? Not clear, but his splashy, foggy show certainly had people buzzing as Fashion Week got underway in earnest.
—Jocelyn Noveck
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