As New York Fashion Week comes to a close, we’re taking a look at the new collections introduced for the Fall/Winter 2023 season by Thom Browne, Gabriela Hearst, Cucculelli Shaheen, and more.
Courtesy of Thom Browne.
A tale of two intergalactic travelers walked the runway of Thom Browne during its fall/winter 2023 presentation, which featured designs for men’s and womenswear. The otherworldly adventure melded with the house’s signature notions of the uniform—not to be confused with uniformity—with imagery of asteroids, planets, angelic beings, and other extraterrestrial entities. Foundations of tweed, striped, and plaid suiting laid the way for looks that recontextualized form and purpose, utilizing the original shape of classic garments to make up new ones—like dresses, skirts, and entire suits made from deconstructed suit pieces, where their original details were still intact. We also saw a series of white gowns with pictorial graphics in detailed appliques and sculptural garments that exaggerated quintessential shapes with ballooning details. Each model was styled in a series of unique hairstyles, makeup looks, and headpieces, which underscored ideas of beings from outer space.
Gabriela Hearst fall/winter 2023.
The latest collection from Gabriela Hearst—fall/winter 2023 designs for men and women—looked to Hearst’s own design heroes: Eileen Gray and Ricardo Bofill. Hovering above an otherwise-empty runway in a vast industrial space was a three-dimensional geometric configuration fashioned after the late designer Bofill’s The City in Space, which came to be in a collaboration with Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura. There, atop a glossy runway, that Hearst introduced designs born from questions of timelessness and modernity the life and work of Gray helped answer: Can they exist together? What is at once classic and eternally new? The resulting garments brought to mind these exact descriptors, employing fresh ideas on a series of classic silhouettes, like suiting, sweaters and knit dresses, leather pieces, and more. A few of our favorite designs included a black trench coat pieced together from modular squares of leather (suggestive of a work of Gray’s), a one-shouldered column dress silhouette that pooled around the waist and revealed a leather bra, and a voluminous striped dress and poncho in yellow, black, and red.
Courtesy of Cucculelli Shaheen.
Cucculelli Shaheen’s fall/winter 2023 collection, “Les Radiants,” embodied a play on light and shadow and the passing from night into day, turning to elements like chaos and classicism, and the work of artists Georges de La Tour, Rembrandt, and Christopher Bucklow to find inspiration. Effortless silhouettes were to an awe-inspiring effect when paired with the house’s intricate beading and luxe fabrications, which were imagined in black, gray, red, nudes, and neutrals for its fifteenth collection. We saw halter neck shapes with sleeved shrugs, slip dresses that glittered with intricate patterns, and soft-falling mock-necks with sensual cut-outs at the hips or waist. Standout looks included a miniature silhouette with mesh pants and a cape in beading that reminded us of chainmail, a black gown with beaded sunbursts surrounding openings on the side and a Medusa headpiece, and a beaded gown in scarlet with off-the-shoulder sleeves that draped to the ground.
Courtesy of Altuzarra.
Ideas of supernatural versus human and that which is magical with things that are real collided in the fall/winter 2023 debuts from Altuzarra. Thinking of Charlotte Higgins’s Greek Myths: A New Retelling(a series of myths that have been reimagined to be narrated from the point of view of female protagonists), the collection is one that highlights the feminine form in powerful, enchanting silhouettes and magical colors like periwinkle, gold, deep red, and aqueous blues. Mainstays of the debuts included explorations of the parka that were at once ornate and utilitarian like a silken floor-length iteration with embroidery, fur details, and a mermaid silhouette. Column goddess gowns rippled with drapery and hoods alongside a series of hand-painted prints, including those reminiscent of Rorschach ink blots, and a suite inspired by scavenged flowers and leaves.
Courtesy of Batsheva.
Batsheva’s designer Batsheva Hay creates clothing from her own love of getting dressed—an emotional affair—focusing on effeminate styles associated with American fashion, reminiscent of iconic silhouettes by the likes of Laura Ashley and Gunne Sax. In the brand’s fall/winter 2023 presentation, Hay invited her friends to model the newest designs, showing them off along with a canvas of white dresses, where the audience and models were all invited to write a word or phrase encapsulating their feelings whilst experiencing the designs. The looks were primarily mid-length dresses (with the inclusion of the occasional miniature silhouette and the odd ruffled pant set) imagined with a number of fabrics, prints, and details, though the main thread that connected them all was a feeling of ceremony for the everyday. Models carried squares of glass with their own hand-written notes, and a few of our favorite styles included a satin gown in a blue-gray hue featuring ruffles at the cuffs, an elegant boat neckline, a flower-like headpiece, and the hand-written message “badass with manners”; an elevated Holly Hobbie-esqu a-line dress with mismatched fabrics and a ruffled collar; and a suit in blue and red striped jacquard featuring puffed shoulders, a high collar, and frills at the pants hems.
Courtesy of Another Tomorrow.
Effortless, chic, and comfortable are the words we’d use to describe the newest collection from Another Tomorrow. Shapes were easygoing and fitted the form softly or more spacious and focused on a single highlight or detail—like a tie at the waist, a slightly-revealed decolletage, or a pattern of intricate crochet. Accompanying more understated black garments were colors like salmon pink, bright red, and mustard. These hues painted items that gave off a professional allure that was appropriate for work but comfortable enough for play—like cocoon coats with enlarged lapels, soft knit sets of pants and collared shirts, long dresses, denim sets, supple suiting basics, and pieces with fringed details, like a turtleneck tank in red.
