Our 10 Favorite Shows from NYFW Fall 2019

Our 10 Favorite Shows from NYFW Fall 2019

It’s a time of chaos. Designer’s at this season’s New York Fashion Week were faced with the dilemma of pushing for something new, and pulling for something beautiful, and wound up tangled in the pressures of subverting expectations while still considering the establishment. New York is long known for leading conversations about the future of the fashion industry, and this season from Vaquera to Marc Jacobs to Tom Ford, a new era in the fashion industry has clearly emerged. Diversity and inclusivity were put on the forefront in the Fall 2019 shows. Below are our top 10 runway shows that have emphasized and beautifully endorsed this new trend. While some private figures out there are talking about building walls, these designers are exploring and reopening conversations of race, gender, and class, creating a safe place for us all to make our voices heard.

Staud

Sarah Staudinger’s fall runway show was all about women living their best lives. The presentation proved to be an exuberant, if not festive event that celebrated fashion, accessories and everything pretty. For their Fall RTW 2019 collection the namesake label appeared on the runway as a montage of prints – stripes, plaids, floral, animal, and not to mention two pieces with printed mushrooms. The models danced carelessly, joyfully down the runway, some in pairs and others solo, just loving life and fashion altogether. These playful, yet highly exquisite clothes were signature of the designer’s aesthetic pushing for diversity while pulling from convention. The inventive looks were reminiscent of seventies, eighties and nineties styles with a touch of retro disco, opposing more chic pear trimmed dresses, and set against matching sets, and fringe ensembles. It was all so beautiful, so glamorous, yet can still be considered casual – perfect for our everyday princesses masquerading as a fallen angel.

Tom Ford

Tom Ford is the fashion world’s optimist. He brings together Prada and Louis Vuitton and creates and infusion of everything uplifting and mesmerizing that we know fashion to be. The designer’s normally fowerful, aggressive designes took a gentle, feminine turn this season. “I wanted beauty,” the fashion idealist told reporters. For this show that meant soft pastels and easy, relaxed tailorings. The calm aura meant for shiny, business casual blouses, satin, dance-worthy pants, classy, looped neck scarves, and animal-friendly fur top hats. Models appeared in simplicity and with timeless ease with layered and drooped silhouettes contoured by fitted pants and slimming jackets that added shoulder definition and added a certain polish and refining quality to the ultra chic collection.

Marc Jacobs

The models in Marc Jacob’s RTW Fall 2019 collection represented a daunting exchanged between whimsical joy and obscure intimacy. The models commanded the crowded space, walking on a well-lit reflective black floor installed by Jacobs in the Park Avenue Armory. Each look reminiscent of dazzling fifties couture. With less than 180 seats and forty looks to present, the show was seclusive and dark, conjuring up a feeling of déjà vu to a time of spotlighted, small runway shows. Each look in the show was highly focused and harped an angelic, if not dreamlike kind of beauty between full volume gowns and masterpieces of feathers, sequins, plaids, and knits.

Jill Stewart

For her breezy and fanciful, edgy Fall 2019 collection Jill Stuart pulled all the shots in her powerful, yet beautiful aesthetic approach calling her concept a “Wild romance.” The collection intermingled rich, vibrant fabrics – velvets, satins, silks with transcendental hues of dusk purples, auroral reds and forest greens. The designer impressed the audience with tactile stripes, crop tops, tailored trousers, and Victorian puffed sleeves of varying silhouettes from tight-fitting straight legs, to natural button downs and classic gowns, cinched at the waist by simple black belts.

Creatures of the Wind

Shane Gabier and Christoper Peters, designers of Creatures of the Wind have, as of 2017, refocused the concept of their project driven brand, on that would not only introduce new trends fall 2019 New York Fashion Week, but would tap into social values, that of gender-fluidity in fashion in particular. The show was delivered at the Pratt Institute campus in Brooklyn where Gabier is a visiting professor in the fashion department. In the college’s auditorium, models appeared on the runway in a parade of styles that were produced via different avenues of production and distribution. The majority of pieces were one of a kind such as a 40s French Mouton coat amongst numerous vintage garments including tee shirt dresses and denim fringe ensembles. The designers’ creative endeavor indeed proved to push for sustainability and diversity without overlooking luxury beauty.

Luar

Luar Raul Lopez is known to be a designer of deconstruction and this season, following quite a few black and white shows, presented his show, taking a more narrative aesthetic approach. The avant-garde visionaries’ designs came in iterations of revealing cutouts, loose draping, youthful mini skirts, not to mention remarkable fur-trimmed mini dress. These sexy outfits were juxtaposed with refined accessories including belts and tailored zips and buttons, speaking to the quality of uniqueness of the collection. Lopez’s DIY approach to fashion can trace its inception to his struggle with self identity and discovering the ways in which, and how he was willing to express himself to the world through art and door-breaking creativity.

Christian Cowan

Christian Cowan showed off his collection through a satirical juxtaposition between the era of overly excessive sharing through social media and utmost luxurious, whimsy and swishy garments. With shapes being inspired by iconic Hollywood movie stars, garments included a mix of over-the-top embellishments including a hot pink, skin-tight cocktail dress, an estranged feathered skirt intro, a rhinestone trimmed draping piece, all being accented by classic-gone-crazy jewelry.

Gypsy Sport

For this season’s Gypsy Sport presentation, Rio Uribe delivered a spine-tingling on the basis of fluidity, retrogression, and direct insurgence, a characteristic that has come to define the newfangled brand. The evocative, barely-covering pieces of the collection featured a wearable mix of lingerie and sportswear, modeled by both mean and women. In a mood of striking attitude and confrontational seduction was a display of lace underwear, contrasted by mini slip dresses, satirical graphic motifs printed on battle caps embellishing an exta-extra suit, and utterly show stopping frisky knitted denim piece overlaying leather black underwear. Rendering sustainability one of his tope priorities, Uribe has exceeded expectations. Making underwear a new outwear garment, sharpening his skills of trend driving innovation in a way that upturns establishment.

Vaquera

Vaquera upturned home decor for a collective that spoke to income inequality. The brand’s designers, Patric DiCaprio, Bryn Taubensee and Claire Sullivan parodied one of the most debated political issues of our nation’s day by exploring surface trappings and obsessing over antique showpieces. Decorative home items were explored, speaking to many of our secret habits of using home decor as a means to conceal our financial insecurities. The quirky collection was held in a Ukrainian banquet hall on the Lower East Side, making for an unusual locale, unconventional for the industry standard, but still managed an intimate runway experience, not lacking of show-stopping and exaggerated pieces. The eccentric, schizo collection included an 18th century, Marie Antoinette over-the-top gown of white toweling, a life-sized present complete with a promising gown, and a duvet, and a dress constructed of a lampshade – the concept of a well-kept home indeed.

Diane von Furstenberg

“I would love to be remembered as somebody who also helped a lot of women be the women they wanted to be,” says Diane von Furstenberg to sources during an appointment showing her fall 2019 collection. The designer is known for her numerous philanthropic missions which seek to empower women to find their voices, just as she has through fashion. This season, she reflects her vision through bold prints, feminine silhouettes, and delightful matching pieces, all meant to give women the confidence they deserve. Along with Furstenberg’s iconic flattering wrap dress there were basic pieces of neutral colors, happy-go-lucky loose fitting dresses with loud prints, and versatile pieces that could go with animal prints as well as sexy and cool slip dresses. All well-executed, DVF did not neglect sensuality for fresh, spiffy charm this season.