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Lena Dunham, Solange, and More Wear ApparelMagic Clients at the Met Gala

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The stars of movies, music, TV, and fashion converged last night at the Met Gala in New York City. The red carpet, often deemed the “Fashion Oscars” due to the high-profile celebrities, included a number of them promoting ApparelMagic clients.

The subject of the 2016 documentary The First Monday in May, the Met Gala is an annual fundraiser headed by Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour for the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute.

With this year’s exhibition celebrating designer Rei Kawakubo’s visionary body of work, the typically white-tie dress code directed these VIPs to go out of their comfort zone with avant-garde looks.

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Just weeks after the end of her groundbreaking HBO series Girls, Lena Dunham was back in the spotlight in a ballgown by ApparelMagic client Elizabeth Kennedy. Worn with her trademark irreverence, the off-the-shoulder number referenced motifs running through the Met’s exhibition: namely, the tartans and plaids Kawakubo is drawn back to again and again and her lifelong affinity with assymmetry. Topping the Elizabeth Kennedy gown off with a messy bun and casual bangs, Dunham found the perfect balance between her elegant eveningwear and her fun-loving demeanor.

Jenni Konner, a director, writer, and producer on HBO’s Girls, twinned with her partner in crime in a merlot column dress, also by ApparelMagic client Elizabeth Kennedy. With huge bell sleeves cinched with black straps, Konner’s dress was a punky take on formalwear. Elizabeth Kennedy, an emerging designer brand, is quickly becoming the modern woman’s one-stop shop for dramatic but unfussy evening dresses.

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Solange Knowles is topping not just the charts, but now even topping Vogue’s Best Dressed List. In a cold-weather tuxedo by ApparelMagic client Thom Browne from his Fall 2017 show, Solange showed that her sister Beyonce is not the only force to be reckoned with in both music and fashion. The Thom Browne ensemble, a down-filled puffer overcoat with a long train, cemented the Cranes in the Sky singer’s status as a tastemaker.

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With the front page news in the theatre world of her new award earlier this week, Cynthia Erivo is a rising star. The Grammy, Tony, and now Emmy winner chose ApparelMagic client Thom Browne for this occasion for a surreal ballgown-style assemblage of deconstructed tailoring. Walking up the Met’s grand stair like a 2017 Marie Antoinette, her hair was styled in the Louis XVI pouf style paired with a dress substituting panniers for white brocade blazers.

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Superstar rapper Wiz Khalifa isn’t the first person you’d expect to see in white tie and tales, but at a gala exhibiting an iconoclastic designer, the combination seems especially opportune. The graphic tailcoat and waistcoat offer the perfect contrast to his many, many tattoos and over the top jewelry. With a pair of low key sunglasses to shield his eyes from a blinged out watch, Khalifa is this century’s perfect gentleman in his Thom Browne finery.

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DJ and music producer Diplo took some time off the top 40 to take in the sights at the Costume Institute in a suit by ApparelMagic client Thom Browne. Trimmed in black grosgrain and hemmed into the designer’s signature cropped silhouette, the suit made the Grammy winner into every bit the heartthrob.

Rebels with a cause at Public School

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America, the beautiful. Public School’s Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne put out a collection this season at New York Fashion Week dedicated to their country from sea to shining sea. Or maybe more accurately, From Manhattan city street to great plains field to Los Angeles basketball court. Indeed, with models wearing clever red caps proclaiming “Make America New York” and fuzzy white moccasins, you knew this wasn’t a standard star-spangled version of the United States.

Looking to bring together the red and the blue—literally, in the case of some patriotic paisleys, and geopolitically, with urban streetwear and farmers’ plaids—Public School found a bipartisan approach with the most chic denim on denim looks for some and deconstructed suiting with open shoulders for others. This was anything, though, but a compromise.

Somewhere between a hoodie screen printed with a close up of Michael Jordan’s face and a mean set of cranberry colored jackets, you could tell that this folksy-varsity hybrid was exactly what the country needed. Or at least the fashion industry.

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Seizing the Day with Badgley Mischka

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Starting with the runway itself, which was set with vignettes of furniture from their brand-new home line, this was a season of firsts for Badgley Mischka. The ApparelMagic client is known around the world for their elegant gowns and cocktail dresses, but starting this fall, their loyal customers can wear Badgley Mischka all day long.

The show began with thirty-some-odd iterations of their impeccable eveningwear, this season turning towards old 1940s Hollywood for inspiration. Every dress was gorgeous, as can be expected from these red carpet masters: some sleek columns in midnight blue sequins, others goddess style in diaphanous red chiffon. Each look was set off with the model’s bright red lips and strong, screen siren brows. One shirtdress in particular, lushly embroidered in metallics over sheer panels, seemed absolutely finale-worthy. But the boys at Badgley Mischka had a trick up their sleeve: their new daytime ready-to-wear line.

Bridging the divide between comfortable and classy, the new line included everything from luxe velour sweatsuit separates to swing coats paired with easy slacks and leggings. Accessories were elevated with youthful details like embellishments on slip-on sneakers and fur pom-poms on beanie hats. Whether a fancy film premiere or a casual weekend movie at home, the new Badgley Mischka is a 24/7 lifestyle brand.

Eckhaus Latta’s Department Store Takeover

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Leave it to New York’s premier provocateurs to show their latest fall collection in an abandoned store in midtown Manhattan. The dated, neglected retail space, patchy carpet and all, proved to be the perfect foil for Eckhaus Latta’s dowdy-cum-avant-garde designs. The ApparelMagic clients, a design duo of Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta, have been upending the trend-driven fashion landscape with their own brand of cerebral cool, but this collection shows that they are ready for the big leagues.

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Fabricating much of the clothing on display in shiny outerwear nylon, the designers took on classic American sportswear in the most underground of ways. The first model out wore a jacket in fleece tie-dyed like a microbial culture and a skirt that could button away from midi to mini at a moment’s notice. Another innovative look included felt leggings that below the knee were sliced and diced into pointe shoe ribbons.

In keeping with the label’s progressive slant, the show was often androgynous, with menswear taking cues from women in the knitwear department, and both genders wearing mannish, square-shouldered blazers. One male model wore a head-to-toe safety orange number, as if to announce: “This is Eckhaus Latta, and this is the face of fashion today.”

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Zero + Maria Cornejo’s Velvety Vision

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What could be more luxurious than wrapping yourself in huge swathes of crimson velvet? Not much, according to Zero + Maria Cornejo. The ApparelMagic client’s fall runway show at New York Fashion Week was dedicated to the indulgent fabric in all of its luster.

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Sticking to mostly oversized volumes, each piece felt generous and a little bit decadent, starting with loose A-line skirts with hems that sinuously dipped and peaked paired with roomy sweaters and punctuated by bright red velvet sandals or tall, slouchy boots.

Shoulders were on display, many casually exposed through wide necklines or sensual cut outs. A pair of evening shell tops in gold and red velvet were cinched at the neckline on one side and elegantly slid off the opposite shoulder.

Cornejo took a similarly restrained look at daywear. Confining herself to a palette of mostly neutrals, she let her loose silhouettes in fine wools and silks do the talking. If their subtle luxury wasn’t clear enough, a couple of Mongolian lamb jackets and coats were thrown into the mix. Cornejo’s vision of luxury is understated and elegant, but at the same time, it’s modern enough for today’s woman.

Thom Browne takes to the Ice

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From their looks to the way they move, penguins are arguably the funniest of the animal kingdom. And for a designer who loves to inject more than a little bit of humor into his fashion, Thom Browne’s adoption of a penguin motif this season seems particularly apt.

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Staging his typically wacky piece of theatre on a set imitating a frozen lake and surrounded by these chilly birds (sewn in wool houndstooth, of course,) the ApparelMagic client brought forth an cadre of ice skating tomboys in suiting that ranged from steadfastly conservative with only outré proportions to mark Browne’s involvement all the way to the far-out groovy of one particular astrakhan overcoat paneled in primary colors to duplicate a childish illustration of a storybook-style prairie church.

The penguin motif appeared in a dozen iterations. Sometimes it was nearly tessellated on a patent leather coat, other times a full-size version functioned as a leather handbag. The final models, however, in their black and white and bow ties, reminded us that while the classic tuxedo is often jokingly called a “penguin suit,” under Browne’s supervision it can be as modern and chic as it is funny.

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Putting on the Glitz at Naeem Khan

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This awards season, expect more glitz and glamor than ever. As one of Hollywood’s favorite brands, ApparelMagic client Naeem Khan took to the runway at New York Fashion Week with a collection heavy on crystal, tinsel, and everything that shines.

Starting off the show on a high note, the first model made her way down a premiere-worthy red carpet in a louche set of black silk pajamas with thick stripes of crystals worn over lacy lingerie. The next look was an equally stunning robe coat embroidered from collar to hem with metallic gold thread. Both looks, while updated with a maximal, showgirl style, harkened back to Faye Dunaway’s iconic silk-robe-attired portrait at the Beverly Hills Hotel after her 1977 Oscar win.

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The extensive detailing was not limited to only the pajama dressing styles, but further applied to a suite of coats, dresses, and over-the-knee boots in graphic jumbo florals. Too much was just enough when Khan layered those florals with oversize leopard print and spliced it with beading, purple rick-rack, and sheer insets. Showpieces galore.

Other, more paired down pieces made just as much effect though, with a dress for every type of embellishment and style, including a feather column, a gold-scaled sweetheart neckline number, another patterned with petals, and classic red chiffon drapes.

Tailor made to make an impression in the paparazzi’s flashbulbs, we can expect Hollywood’s best—and brightest—starlets to take a spin in Khan’s frocks down the red carpet.

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Jonathan Simkhai takes a trip to Spain for New York Fashion Week

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Bullfighting may be on its way out on the other side of the Atlantic, but its iconic uniforms may never go out of style, especially if ApparelMagic client Jonathan Simkhai is involved. Indeed, his fall collection was an ode to Spain and all of its traditional costumes, short maybe only of mantillas.

The opening look, a matador’s ensemble updated for 2017, replaced gold braiding for tiny grommets, and eschewed a shirt entirely so as to expose a sliver of a midriff. While the inspirations might be classics, these were no costume museum displays.

More likely, they’d be what a Kardashian or Jenner would wear to the Costume Institute’s Met Gala. This goes doubly for the finale gowns, blindingly gorgeous ones that looked as if the wearer just stepped out of a shower of crystals.

The matador-inflected style was repeated throughout the collection in various forms, from a minimal white suit to motorcycle leathers to a version in denim.

On the cocktail and evening side of the equation, Simkhai favored off-the-shoulder shapes and sleeves with slight flares. Feeling cold? An assortment of super-luxe fur stoles and puffy fur coats could fend off a winter breeze over the Iberian peninsula.

Jill Stuart’s Victorian Vamps

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ApparelMagic client Jill Stuart cast a spell with her fall presentation at New York Fashion Week. Like red-lipped, retro witches, the models stood in pointed shoes on platforms above the crowd, looking down imposingly. Swathed in voluminous velvets and heavy melton wool, they were femme fatales with a flair for the seventies.

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A heavy Victorian undercurrent ran through the collection, with high, often tied or ruffled necklines and sleeves ranging in shape from bishop to leg-o-mutton and back again. These high-coverage looks were often cut with transparent fabrics or even mesh, making them more Biba than prairie wife. A number of the looks went full-on YSL with throwback riffs on his famous Le Smoking tuxedo jacket and tiered taffeta skirts.

The stars of the show, however, were the wide black belts with huge brass buckles cinching in the closing looks. While they could equally well be sitting undiscovered in a thrift store since the 1970s, suddenly they look absolutely of the moment for 2017.

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Nicole Miller goes Glam Rock Grunge

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A backdrop peeling with urban decay set the perfect stage for Nicole Miller’s fall runway show at New York Fashion Week. The brand, an ApparelMagic client, oscillates between uptown and downtown, and this season the designer was resolutely below 14th Street. Taking on the Nirvana decade directly with combat boots and destroyed denim, Miller also twisted some of the trends of the era to bring them up to date. Bandanas became paisley-print pants or a handkerchief-hem dress with a flannel shirt knotted around the waist.

Another print took a step towards the occult with fortune cookies, skulls, and crystal balls. Like rock stars after a swing by Bergdorf Goodman, many of the models sported louche leather jackets or show-stopping sequin baseball jackets.

Badges with tattoo motifs like roses, Chinese dragons, evil eyes, and skull and crossbones appeared on many of the other jackets and outerwear.

Miller’s final look was in many ways its apotheosis: an evening dress complete with studs and tarot card embroidery and topped off with a nonchalant beanie.

Sachin & Babi amp up the opulence at New York Fashion Week

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Looking back at their native India, Sachin and Babi Ahluwalia combined ballgowns, bombers, and extensive beading in their collection at New York Fashion Week.

No strangers to a little glitz, the Sachin and Babi show featured embellishments of all kinds: Maharaja-inspired bejeweled headpieces, embroidered ballgown skirts, a jacket covered in sequins, and one sheer black cocktail dress dotted with organza flowers that looked straight out of a couture atelier.

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The brand, an ApparelMagic client, is known more for its cocktail dresses and formalwear, but that didn’t stop the couple from adding in sporty statements filtered through their own dressed-up lens. The opening look was a technical anorak finished with gold embroidery and a ruffled hem, while another model walked the runway in athleisure-style separates in head-to-toe peach silk.

The mostly monochromatic collection was punctuated with these peaches, pinks, burgundies, and reds just as several gowns were printed with trendy blown-up florals sitting on black grounds.

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ApparelMagic clients rule the runway at New York Fashion Week

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ApparelMagic clients Sean Monahan and Monica Paolini hit all the right notes this season with their latest collection for their Sea New York line. Imbued with casual, beachy vibes, each item was washed or unfinished just enough to keep them equally elegant and effortless.

With distinct seventies influences running through the collection, the garments themselves ran the gamut from buttercup and pale pink cropped jumpsuits all the way to Victorian prairie blouses taken straight out of a Willa Cather novel and brought up to date with on-trend shoulder cut outs.

For those looking for more understated looks, there was also great variety and possibilities. Length is Sea’s story of the season, with a crisp, floor-length skirt perfect for any summer day, or cropped pants paired with a long indigo duster jacket falling nearly to the ankle.

The collection also played with volumes in the case of baggy trousers that pooled around the models’ shoes and looked especially fresh for the season.

Other stand-out looks included the sweetest chambray dress, tea-length with a button front and off-the-shoulder bishop sleeves, as well as several tops and dresses that tied together in the back, on the bust, or at the shoulder with huge bows. Even inspired by extra-serious pioneers, the designers still know how to be playful.

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The most refreshing place to cool off during the frequently scorching New York Fashion Week was undoubtably a certain rooftop pool in the city’s West Village. ApparelMagic client Flagpole staged their spring swimwear presentation there, showcasing the line between sunny blue skies and the cool blue pool.

Stationed around the pool, models showed off the season’s bright corals and aquas, color blocked cleanly with contrasting navy or white. Flagpole’s aesthetic has a midcentury look, and fans of high-waisted bottoms will not be disappointed, with a couple of prime examples including a hybrid one-piece with a standard high-waisted brief bottom attached to a rash guard top.

Outside of the deep end, the collection also offered a number of coverup options like a loose fitting teal playsuit or a wrap skirt for the walk back to the cabana.

Jaime Barker and Megan Balch’s premium line has previously focused on swimwear, but this season marks its expansion into activewear with several sleek takes on yoga staples including leggings and sports bras. Covered in the same graphic blocking as this season’s swim, they are the perfect minimalist alternatives to gimmicky performancewear found elsewhere.

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Fashion references dance constantly, and who can blame it? With graceful ballerinas, cerebral contemporary dancers, and flamenco femmes fatale, it is an unending spring of imagery from which designers can pull. However, ApparelMagic client Jill Stuart‘s studio examined dancers from a much much different angle this season. Putting her models in the armwarmers of professional dancers, Stuart focused her gaze on the rehearsal studio. If anything, Stuart’s collection looked beyond the stage and idolized the dancers for their craft and long hours of dedication in the studio.

As if caught between warmups and a recital, some models wore diaphanous dresses over leggings while others were in middle of a costume change with a black slip showing beneath a tissue-thin floral dress. Another embellished gown in buff chiffon was worn over a metallic sweater with extra long sleeves, which, with the layers reversed, would look downright stunning off the stage after stepping away from the dancehall on a chilly spring night.

Stuart showed herself particularly unafraid of the limits of taste with this collection. With a very careful eye, she mixed, matched, and clashed various colors and prints, breaking fashion rules while affecting super cool carelessness. Florals were nineties on punk black backgrounds, and black tulle was layered over rainbows of colors adding an extra shot of je ne sais quoi.

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This season, Naeem Khan went full-on seventies glam. The ApparelMagic client best known for his dazzling gowns on the red carpet proved he also knows how to get down to disco. Models looked like they were stepping into famed nightclub Studio 54 in Halston-inspired dresses that flattered every curve.

The dresses, many long sleeve, knit, and floor length, were covered in swirls, sequins, and sometimes Warholian poppy motifs. One after another, Khan sent out every variation of cocktail and evening dress, from fringed flapper minidresses to one richly embroidered with a matching headscarf.

Vibrant colors, especially a knock-out red, amped up the drama, and one could see why so many Hollywood stars choose Naeem Khan for their most important nights.

Some highlights of the collection included a number of looks with mega floral patterns rendered in sequins and a few pale tulle dresses covered dripping with gold and electric yellow embroidery. Handiwork was omnipresent here, with one of the more extreme ideas being a three-piece look—cape, shell top, and leggings—doused entirely in the most fun sequin pattern this side of 1979.

Maria Cornejo‘s namesake line is a standard-bearer of thoughtful, responsible design in New York’s fashion scene, and her spring collection was no exception. Anchoring the runway show was an eco-friendly viscose that Cornejo showed off in a variety of applications. In a palette limited almost entirely to a natural eggshell, and ensembles eliminating even footwear, all excesses were put aside, focusing on cut and proportion.

And what brilliant feats of pattern engineering they were. Loose, flowing clothes were like visions of some beautiful, utopian future where fashion doesn’t harm the environment and minimalist dressing is the order of the day.

Starting from the first look, an updated version of an eighteenth-century nightgown, it was love at first sight with the easy, long-and-lean silhouettes. Many looks had strong vertical lines, some with ribbons hanging untied, languidly flowing behind the barefoot models.

The few items shown of different fabrication looked like rough-hewn hemps that contrasted beautifully with the gossamer drapes of the rest of the collection. Keeping things simple, Cornejo is creating a future we want to live in.

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Femininity is having a moment, if husband and wife team Sachin and Babi Ahluwalia’s spring collection is any indication. Their line, Sachin & Babi, showed a dizzying array of laces and florals at its presentation at New York Fashion Week. In a palette of rosy tones and classic black and white, the collection took girlish dresses every direction, from sweet and virginal floor length gowns to modish pink minidresses to even red Spanish-inspired looks.

These dresses aren’t the prim and proper ones of old, however. Each is brought up to speed with the current climate with subtle changes that make them less suited for a fairytale princess and more for the strong women of today.

Perhaps the biggest contrasts lay in a number of dresses in saccharine hues with thick black straps that criss-cross the body before being tied into an easy knot.

Florals here aren’t delicate, but bold enough to send a shock with their painterly embroidery. In the same vein, flounces are treated eccentrically with black trim. Not your grandmother’s ruffles.

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Thom Browne’s spring show was an ode to the bathing beauties of yesteryear.

Models entered as a big, jovial group, giggling and preening together in retro beach coverups and coordinating bathing caps as they took their places around a simulated pool done up in brightly colored tiles.

With the cinematic flourish Browne’s shows are known for, as a silver-sequin clad model—with a hat that could only be the offspring of a dog and a disco ball—made her way by each model, they took off their beach gear to reveal layers of kitschy prep. There was gingham and tennis whites, checkerboard prints and hibiscus motifs, all of the iconic resort staples thrown into a surrealist blender.

Browne, an ApparelMagic client, is never one to go the obvious route, and upon closer inspection, it was all an illusion of trompe-l’oiel. Each ensemble was actually one fully fashioned item. Coats and cardigans and shirts and skirts were all sewn as single garments, each entered through a long wetsuitesque zipper in the back.

Before the show ended, the models made their last costume change of the show, all stripping down to red, blue, and white striped bathing costumes and posing like vintage pin-up girls en masse.

After only breaching the new millenium a decade and a half ago, it might seem early, but for New York’s finest fashion designers, the oughts are back in style. 2015 CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund winner and ApparelMagic client Jonathan Simkhai took everything we love about LA-chic circa 2005 and threw out the parts we already want to forget.

In soft white silks, sandy-hued laces, and muted indigo chambrays, Simkhai’s spring collection took on the socialite era with a subtle elegance that belied the decade’s tabloid past.

Models walked the runway in dreamy dishabille, with white robes and lingerie-inspired lace and negligees-turned-cocktail dresses. Plunging deep V necklines and slits up-to-there showed some skin but the restrained intricacies of the lace and embroidery took it away from any vulgar territory.

Even beyond the millennial lingerie-inspired camisole trend, Simkhai took on other 00s staples, including the bootcut jean and the mermaid dress. This time, however, he took that flared leg and added it to a chambray skirt as a delicate trumpet hem. As for the mermaid dress present at every early 2000s award show, all he needed to do this time around was add some trend-right cut outs and sheer panels to bring it right up to 2017.

Easily one of the headlining show of New York Fashion Week is Shayne Oliver’s controversial label Hood By Air. Following up a prestigious New Yorker profile, the ApparelMagic client took to the runway with characteristic bravado.

One of the first looks labeled itself in bold red letters “Not Suitable for Children” which seemed absolutely appropriate as models of both genders stomped out in androgynous but very adult outfits with hair and even faces covered in vaseline.

Many of the looks were cool, underground versions of traditional menswear, but done with a panache that would fly better at an arty party than in a boardroom. Some staid white shirts were stamped with colorful language, while others transformed into halter tops. Closing looks in wool suiting were one piece with zippers and took the suit the farthest possible from the source material, but in the best way possible.

Many other looks, too, were difficult to parse, including cowboy boots that had toes going each way, forward and backward. For a label that only seasons ago was making its name in logo T shirts, these conceptual items show huge growth.

Hood By Air often dresses the biggest names in hip hop, including Rihanna just weeks ago at the MTV Video Music Awards, it shouldn’t be surprising that the styling would look even better on stage than on the runway. A few looks were outfitted as just a parka and not much else, and one can imagine they’ll show up on Rihanna’s back in record time.