Just months into his tenure as the new Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) chairman, Tom Ford made waves by shrinking the NYFW show to five days from two weeks, starting on Friday night with Rag & Bone at 5 pm, ending on Wednesday at 6 pm with Marc Jacobs. In shortening the NYFW official calendar, Ford’s desire was to ensure a quality-controlled experience. This was made possible by a tight curation of designers and a focus on making American fashion more global.
While we were on the edge of our seats, the new schedule certainly did not disappoint as it made everything feel more urgent, in a good way. Experiences were plentiful, from TommyxZendaya’s night at the Apollo to Ralph Lauren’s cinematic nightclub featuring recording artist Janelle Monáe to Kerby Jean-Raymond’s Pyer Moss, whose Sunday sermon show made us more optimistic about the future of American fashion (more on that later).
And trends were aplenty, like spring’s new power uniform, the dapper suit seen at shows like Victoria Beckham, Area, and Tory Burch. Next level fringe at Zimmerman and Christian Siriano. Fresh florals from Caroline Herrera and touches of highlighter hues from Tom Ford, Helmut Lang, and Christopher John Rogers.
Here are a few important trends to know for Spring 2020:
Spring Gets Dark
Spring felt a bit more like fall this season. The Row and Khaite—designers who typically embraced lighter or more vibrant colors in the past, went darker for Spring 2020. A noticeable move away from last season’s super bright palettes that we saw at the likes of Sies Marjan and Versace. Giving us reason to think that associating Spring with light colors may be a thing of the past. It’s definitely a brave new world.
New Working Woman
Colors and silhouettes typically reserved for Casual Fridays have been infused into business attire. Rebooting the traditional idea of the working woman, no longer limited to a blazer and a skirt. For the New Working Woman, suits can be casual and jeans have never been more formal. Designers like Rag & Bone, Tibi, and Michael Kors gave us a new vision of the working woman, with suits that suits can be any color and don’t have to be two or three pieces, but maybe four and five? With updates like these, the suiting trend for women is not going anywhere.
Neo-Americana Revival
It’s true, Tom Ford wants NYFW to have a more global focus but this doesn’t mean that our American political woes aren’t calling into question our creative identity because they certainly are friends. What is the Americana aesthetic in an age of deep American political resentment?
Consequently, many designers this season attempted to answer that question by revamping references to American culture. Designers like Ulla Johnson and Jonathan Cohen updated blue denim, cowboys, cherry pie, and rock’n’roll. Similarly, other designers explored the American identity by adding rainbow colors to the American flag as a sort of ode to freedom and “pride”. As well as turning the flag into an actual jacket, or using the New York cityscape as print.
Our favorite by far is Pyer Moss’s ode to an unsung American hero, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, who is the godmother of rock and roll. Pyer Moss continues to redefine American fashion as it reinterprets the experiences of black and brown people, showing that we too are America.
Photo/Video Credit: Vogue.com
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