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    What does the American dream mean in 2024? New York fashion week had thoughts

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    I’m writing this as New York fashion week comes to a close, and it’s been a whirlwind six days of shows and antics. Rihanna kept everyone waiting for almost an hour at Alaïa. Wu-Tang Clan popped up with a surprise performance onboard the Tommy Hilfiger ferry and Luar closed out the week with a front-row appearance by Madonna. As for the catwalks? There was one dominant theme that you couldn’t miss, from chinos to varsity jackets and knitted sweaters: preppy is well and truly back.This way of dressing originally took its inspiration from Ivy League sports clubs and campuses. It is a trend that is heavily rooted in class and identity and it comes at a time when these issues are at the forefront of American politics, with the 2024 presidential election less than two months away. Politics was also, naturally, a hot topic on and off the catwalks. Prabal Gurung took his post-show bow in a T-shirt emblazoned with “VOTE” on the front and “Harris/Walz” on the back. Anna Wintour and Jill Biden hit the streets of Manhattan alongside designers including Thom Browne, Michael Kors and Tory Burch as part of a non-partisan voting awareness march organised by the Council of Fashion Designers of America and Vogue. And fresh from her appearance at the DNC, Ella Emhoff, the 25-year-old stepdaughter of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris, was the model and front-row guest of choice for a string of designers including Burch and Coach.But the preppy trend provided the most food for thought. It feeds into a wider commentary from designers on the American dream and what that concept means and looks like in 2024. Immigration is a key part of the notion, and it also happens to be one of the crucial policies that both US parties are grappling with.Ralph Lauren, the son of Jewish immigrants who grew up in the Bronx and now has a reported net worth of £5.3bn, is often held up as the embodiment of the term. His picture-perfect spectacle on Thursday night in the Hamptons oozed an old-money lifestyle that is certainly one version of the dream. Speaking at a reception before the show, where waiters clad in white RL polo tops handed out champagne and miniature lobster rolls, the actor Laura Dern mused on Lauren’s version of preppy. “There is always deep iconography connected to America,” she said. “He loves American traditions and family has always been embedded in his stories. It’s always playful and hopeful. With everything going on, to feel hopeful is a nice feeling.”View image in fullscreenIf Lauren’s world is a version of the American dream as lived by the 1%, Willy Chavarria’s commentary was a little more democratic. Chavarria, who was born in California near the Mexican border, is the son of an Irish-American mother and Mexican-American father. The designer said he wanted to “celebrate immigration and those people who have built the country and are still the backbone of the country”. His show was held in a disused bank on Wall Street, and guests arrived to find a giant US flag hoisted above them and a copy of the American constitution on their seats. Chavarria said he added the accent to the show’s name, América, because this is how the word “is heard through the voice of an immigrant or the child of an immigrant”. The clothes riffed on uniforms – cargo pants and neat button-down shirts – and were said to be a celebration of the workforce. In a nod to farm workers, some wore bandanas wrapped around their faces. “The collection is a story of empowerment,” the designer said. And while Chavarria’s price point is out of reach for most blue-collar workers (trousers cost about £600), it did feel as if he was planting the seed for a new type of American style. “It’s really about the fact that all of us belong, all of us have purpose, and all of us have the ability to make change in this country, especially starting with the vote.”With an invitation that mirrored the American green card, Off-White’s Ib Kamara was also thinking about immigration. Kamara said he had decided to show in New York rather than the brand’s usual slot at Paris because he wanted to bring the brand, which was founded by the late American designer Virgil Abloh, “home”. Kamara explained that, growing up in Sierra Leone, “America was a dream”. “If you want luxury, you come to America. It’s a dream place. You feel hopeful when you come.”Stuart Vevers, the British designer and creative director of Coach, who sent Emhoff down the catwalk wearing an “I heart NY” T-shirt, also spoke about hope. “There’s a sense of optimism in the next generation,” Vevers said. “There’s a lot of hope. They’re going to change things.”To read the complete version of this newsletter – complete with this week’s trending topics in The Measure and your wardrobe dilemmas solved – subscribe to receive Fashion Statement in your inbox every Thursday. More

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      Tory Burch, Rachel Scott, and the Female Fashion Figures Making Waves

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      One year ago, when it was announced that Sarah Burton was leaving Alexander McQueen after 26 years (13 as creative director), that she would be replaced by a young guy named Seán McGirr, and that that meant that all of the designers at Kering, the second largest fashion group in the world, would be men, the news caused a rare moment of breast-beating and introspection in the fashion world. Why were all the big jobs going to men? Why did there seem to be so few women designers?Well, on Monday it turned out that Ms. Burton, and her special kind of poetic power-through-tailoring, would be staging a return, when LVMH named her creative director of Givenchy. That happened to be the same day Tory Burch held a show in New York that solidified her position as one of the tent-pole labels of the week. It was the same day Rachel Scott unveiled a Diotima show that confirmed her as one of the most exciting young designers in the city.All three events functioned as a reminder that not only are there women designers — there are great ones. Perhaps it’s time to focus on them. You see interesting things when you do. Ms. Burch being a prime example.For the last few years she has been pushing herself out of the comfort zone of Lee Radziwill-on-vacation caftans and ballet flats on which she made her name, surprising a fashion world that had largely pigeonholed her as a designer of suburban chic. Instead she has made an increasingly convincing case that she is the Claire McCardell of her generation, a legitimate heir to the woman who helped invent American sportswear.This season was no different, the combination of her main lines and Tory Sport, which used to be designed as two separate collections, leading her to … well, a combination of sport and style that seemed particularly apropos in a post-Olympics, post-WFH world.Tory Burch, spring 2025Swipe for More →Tory BurchYuki Iwamura/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesSlaven Vlasic/Getty Images For Tory BurchSlaven Vlasic/Getty Images For Tory BurchSlaven Vlasic/Getty Images For Tory BurchSlaven Vlasic/Getty Images For Tory BurchWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Night of the Supermodels in New York, Guest Appearance by Rihanna

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      What happened when Pieter Mulier brought the Alaïa show to the Guggenheim.It takes a lot to distract from Rihanna. Especially when she enters a room wearing a cleavage-spilling corset underneath a cream net gown with hundreds of seed pearls caught in its web, sits next to Liv Tyler and starts whispering in her ear.It takes a lot to upstage a mini-reunion of supermodels: Stephanie Seymour in leopard, hugging Naomi Campbell and both of them air-kissing Linda Evangelista, as Amber Valletta, all in black, smiles benignly at the scene.Amber Valletta was among the guests …Gotham/GC Images… as were Naomi Campbell and Stephanie Seymour.The New York TimesYet that is exactly what Pieter Mulier did Friday night with an Alaïa show at the Guggenheim Museum that redefined chic in audience, venue and style. After three years of negotiating, not always easily, with the heritage of the house Azzedine built, he finally made it his own.Holding the first fashion show to take place in the Guggenheim’s soaring atrium with its spiraling Frank Lloyd ramp twirling up to the domed glass ceiling, Mr. Mulier sat his guests — an idiosyncratic mix of gallerists, artists, photographers and fashion folk — on round settees on the ground floor, and then sent the models strolling from top to bottom. At first all the audience could see as they craned their necks back were little heads, bobbing along just above the uppermost part of the ramp. Then shoulders. Then perhaps a torso or two.Finally, the whole thing: a collage of spirals and geometry, form and function that took the essence of sportswear and made it modern. Skin-toned bandeaus were paired with classic Alaïa skater shirts, but rendered lightly in layers of silk chiffon, and billowy trousers that looked like a cross between harem pants and sweatpants (harem sweats?). Later, panniers were added at the hips, as if they had been crossbred with a ball gown and recast in silk taffeta.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      During NYFW, Jill Biden, Anna Wintour and More March for Voting Awareness

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      Jill Biden, Anna Wintour and top American designers participated in a voting awareness march at the onset of New York Fashion Week.Morning rush hour in Midtown Manhattan slowed to a halt on Friday as nearly 1,000 fashion-industry professionals walked up Broadway in a march meant to urge people to vote on Election Day in November.The march, held at the onset of New York Fashion Week, was organized by a group that included the Council of Fashion Designers of America; I Am a Voter, an organization that promotes civic engagement; and Vogue. The event was billed as bipartisan, but an appearance by Jill Biden, the first lady, and a Harris-Walz campaign scarf worn discreetly by Anna Wintour, the editor of Vogue, were among the signs of an underlying Democratic tilt.The march started outside the Macy’s store in Herald Square, where designers, including Tory Burch, Brandon Blackwood, Joseph Altuzarra and Proenza Schouler’s Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hr4ernandez gathered with fashion editors and garment industry workers before the crowd walked roughly six blocks to Bryant Park, chanting “V-O-T-E, vote, vote, vote” along the way.Anna Wintour of Vogue with the designer Thom Browne. On Ms. Wintour’s bag is a scarf Mr. Browne designed in partnership with the Harris-Walz campaign.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesMost marchers wore Old Navy T-shirts that said “Fashion for our future” and were designed by Zac Posen, right, the brand’s chief creative officer.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesThe designer Prabal Gurung marched with the group from Herald Square to Bryant Park.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesMost participants were uniformly dressed in Old Navy T-shirts designed by Zac Posen, the brand’s recently appointed chief creative officer, which were emblazoned with the slogan “Fashion for our future.” In a manner particular to fashion activism, the T-shirts were styled in myriad ways: tucked into pleated slacks, layered over slip dresses, knotted into crop tops.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Handbag Designer Nancy Gonzalez Sentenced to 18 Months for Smuggling Exotic Skins

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      Nancy Gonzalez, whose clients included Britney Spears and Sofia Vergara, smuggled purses from her native Colombia to the United States using couriers. She will serve 18 months.The handbag designer Nancy Gonzalez built a cult following among celebrities and the South American superrich thanks to her use of brilliantly dyed precious skins. Once one of the largest purveyors of crocodile skin accessories in the world, her namesake brand sold totes and clutches in lime green alligator and lavender python skin for thousands of dollars, often through big-name retailers like Saks and Bergdorf Goodman.Now Ms. Gonzalez, 71, is facing considerable time in bright orange coveralls.On Monday, she was sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty in a Miami federal court to charges of smuggling hundreds of handbags made from the skins of protected wildlife into the United States from her native Colombia.Ms. Gonzalez, whose full name is Nancy Tereza Gonzalez de Barberi and whose business was incorporated into a luxury handbag company called Gzuniga Limited, was arrested in 2022 in Cali, Colombia, and then extradited to the United States last August. She admitted to recruiting as many as 40 couriers to carry up to four products at a time on commercial flights to be used at New York Fashion Week and industry events or to be sold in the Gzuniga showroom between February 2016 and April 2019.Prosecutors said that the handbags and purses, made from the hides of caiman alligators and pythons bred in captivity, were worth as much as $2 million. The designer’s lawyers said that the pieces were mostly samples and cost about $140 each, with only about 1 percent lacking the proper authorization to be brought into the United States.The trade in caimans and pythons is not banned but is strictly regulated under the rules of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, of which both the United States and Colombia are signatories. According to prosecutors, Ms. Gonzalez never secured the necessary import permits from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service required by regulators.“It’s all driven by the money,” Thomas Watts-Fitzgerald of the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami, said on Monday. “If you want to deter the conduct, you want the cocaine kingpin not the person in the field.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Luar Brings Beyoncé to Bushwick

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      If you haven’t heard of Luar, you will now.Only two days after Taylor Swift bestowed some of her fairy dust on a niche New York Fashion Week label by wearing Area jeans to the Super Bowl, an even more unlikely moment of celebrity-show synergy occurred: Beyoncé showed up in a warehouse in deep Brooklyn for the Luar show.Yup, Beyoncé’s first public appearance after announcing Renaissance “Act II,” and her first appearance at a New York Fashion Week show in years, was in Bushwick.Even in a world that has become somewhat jaded about celebrity frows (a few hours before the Luar show, Blake Lively, Brie Larson, Gabrielle Union-Wade and Rachel Zegler had shown up at Michael Kors), a Beyoncé appearance at an edgy, independent brand — the kind of brand that doesn’t have the money for pay-to-play arrangements, meaning she must actually like it — was a surprise.It’s the fashion equivalent of winning the attention lottery.The guest of honor made her entrance covered in a blinding number of rhinestones, with mirrored shades and a cowboy hat, toting a Luar bag that she carefully held front and center so it would be in every photograph. Was this a clue to her coming album couturier?Not necessarily. It turned out she and her mother, Tina Knowles, were there to support her sister, Solange, and Solange’s son, Julez Smith Jr., who was making his catwalk debut in the show.That Beyoncé’s appearance would also act like a magnet to bring eyeballs to a label that has been bubbling up through the edges of New York Fashion Week for a few seasons now was a bonus. (Raul Lopez, the Luar designer, was named the 2022 Council of Fashion Designers of America accessory designer of the year and was a finalist for the 2023 LVMH Prize for young designers.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Puppets and Puppets Has Its Last Fashion Week Show

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      On Puppets and Puppets’ last New York Fashion Week show.On Monday, Puppets and Puppets, the six-year-old New York fashion brand/art project, had its last show.Its founder and designer, Carly Mark, had decided it was too hard and too expensive to keep making clothes and trying to build a business in this city, despite being known as “downtown N.Y. gold,” as Highsnobiety called her, and despite developing the sort of culty following that is supposed to be an indicator of success. She is pulling up stakes and moving to London, she told The New York Times last week. She will keep her more lucrative and successful handbag business going from there. But no more runway and no more clothes.Does it matter?Practically, probably not. Fashion history is littered with the corpses of once promising brands that never quite worked out (Miguel Adrover, anyone?), so it’s not as if this is a new story. And even though Ms. Mark was nominated for a CFDA award as emerging designer of the year, the clothes were never all that good.They often fit weirdly or couldn’t really be called clothes, or didn’t seem entirely finished. (She has a fondness for Edie Sedgwick tights and not much else.) They seemed more like works in progress. The material could look sort of flimsy. Ms. Mark was trained as a fine artist, not a designer, and she was essentially learning in real time and in front of the world. But she was getting better.Don AshbyDon AshbyDon AshbyDon AshbyDon AshbyDon AshbyDon AshbyThis season her work actually looked more like real garments than it has in the past, though sometimes only portions of real garments. A big fake fur coat turned out to be a false front; a peplos dress was entirely open on one side, save for a tiny tie at the waist. The hems of some draped jersey skirts and lacy little tops looped back up on themselves to form a veil, creating a sort of portable backdrop. That had potential, as did the holey sweats belted over lace skirts, like a corroded cocktail frock.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Taylor Swift Gives a Fashion Brand a Boost at the Super Bowl

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      Who says Area is just about the concept and not the clothes?About half an hour after the Area show ended in New York on Super Bowl Sunday, Taylor Swift appeared in Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas wearing a pair of the brand’s “crystal slit jeans” — a high-waist denim style sliced diagonally at the center of each thigh, the patently faux “rip” framed by diamanté. It was like a runway-to-real-life feature happening in actual time — or Super time.Area, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary, is generally one of those fashion week brands that most nonfashion people see and say, “But who would wear that?” (Well, other than Simone Biles making a viral statement at the Met Gala.) Ms. Swift was the perfect answer. The designer Piotrek Panszczyk — and indeed all of fashion, which sometimes suffers from a clothes-concept perception gap — could not have planned it better had he tried.Mr. Panszczyk sits firmly in the Moschino-Schiaparelli fashion tradition of wielding sartorial humor as a commentary on contemporary life, though he tends to sit on the punny performance art end of that spectrum. Last season he used “Flintstones” bones and “Dynasty” faux furs to symbolize the evolution of luxury and caste signaling, which came after a season built around the idea of fruit and mortality, mostly in the form of banana skirts. The looks attract the sort of person who does not mind going on a milk run in Bushwick draped in rhinestones and not much else.Ms. Swift, however, is an endorsement of a different kind. It’s not the first time she has worn Area denim. Last April she wore the brand’s crystal butterfly jeans in New York, and in October she wore a pair of Area embellished jeans shorts to another Chiefs game. (She does like a bit of sparkle.) But this is the first time she wore its denim when more than 100 million people were watching. It’s a potent, and deserved, argument for the future of Area as a credible business, rather than merely a fashion week gimmick.AreaAreaAreaAreaAreaAreaAs was the latest collection, which chose as its hot topic the peculiarly modern state of endless watching — of looking, and being looked at in turn. One that seemed notably apropos given the attention being paid to Ms. Swift and everything she does. It’s a serious subject, but the clothes were awfully fun.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More