art, design, architecture, fashion and interior design - NYFW AW2018 RTW

We wish New York Fashion Week was more than just The Marc Jacobs Show, but when you are one of the few designers doing anything different and interesting in an entire city that purports to be a major international fashion centre, it’s a little difficult to move away from that preconceived notion. It’s a city that is finding it increasingly difficult to cater to the middle ground: collections were either targeted to old money, socialites and debutantes, or were more conceptual and artistic - fashion with a capital ‘F’ of the type favoured by club kids and those with “alternative lifestyles”.

Did we like everything Jacobs showed? The simple answer is no, but as we say he did manage to produce a collection that was at least noteworthy for the season. He did this by looking back to the 1980s. His silhouette was stark: wide David Byrne-esque shoulders and double-breasted jackets tapered down to narrow ankles. The Western influence that has been seen on several runways was neatly translated here. Models looked like cowboys or vaqueros. They wore wide-brimmed hats that often obscured their identities and were swathed in yards and yards of fabric. There was very little pattern in the collection save for a clown-like harlequin pattern. Instead texture was key and most of the clothes were colour-blocked in bright colours.