Hello, Open Thread. The holy month of Ramadan began this week. So did the Lunar New Year. Fashion month is also in full swing, with the style set moving on from New York to London. Before everyone left, however, Dash Social, the marketing and management platform, sent out its recap of who, according to social media metrics, dominated New York Fashion Week. And the winner was … Calvin Klein! According to the Dash Social folks, Calvin clocked 18,747 mentions, with 4.7 million engagements. The runner-up was Ralph Lauren, with 4,326 mentions and 3.4 million engagements, followed by Coach with 2,803 mentions and 1.7 million engagements. Why I am telling you this? Because what seems to have driven almost all of the Calvin posts and reposts was the celebrity-studded front row, which included Dakota Johnson, Brooke Shields, Lily Collins and the Thai actress Milk Pansa — and all of their followers. Not, in other words, the clothes, which were confusing. (A full review can be found here.) This reflects the reality that, at least for some brands, the runway is really just the conduit for the celebrity content, the way some Starbucks coffees are just a conduit for a sugar rush. Indeed, there are fashion brands that show clothes that will never be made or make it to stores. And the celeb content serves to sell the other stuff that actually is on the rack. In Calvin’s case, that is the jeans and underwear. There are still some brands that produce and sell everything they show on their runways. Joseph Altuzarra is one of them, as is Carolina Herrera, whose designer Wes Gordon told me that the point was not only to make all the clothes he shows, but also to show a bunch of them on women from the art world. (That’s Ming Smith, Rachel Feinstein, Eliza Douglas and Ahn Duong above.) If that inevitable question “Who will wear that?” comes up, his answer is simple: They will. NUMBER OF THE WEEK
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| King Charles at the Tolu Coker show at London Fashion Week on Thursday. Stella McCartney sits to his left. Simbarashe Cha/The New York Times |
In other news, King Charles III is making waves at London Fashion Week. First he showed up at one of the opening shows of the collections, Tolu Coker, a newish label founded by a British Nigerian designer. It was a rare appearance by a sitting monarch at fashion week and one that was especially notable given that his brother, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, had been arrested by the British police the day before on suspicion of misconduct in public office.
That the king nevertheless thought fashion was important enough to ignore the scrutiny and gossip that would follow his brother’s arrest and come out to support the industry was a pretty striking statement.
Another one: At the show, the king was sitting next to Stella McCartney, the British designer he had just named ambassador for his Sustainable Markets Initiative. That’s the fashion project he started in 2020 with Federico Marchetti, the former chairman of Yoox Net-a-Porter, to address the industry’s role in the climate crisis. Given fashion’s increasing silence on sustainability, his focus on the topic matters.
Think about that. Then plunge into the complicated politics of Rama Duwaji’s style, recently on display at New York Fashion Week; catch up with Rachel Zoe, the OG stylist; and meet the young men obsessed with looksmaxxing.
Have a good, safe weekend. The BAFTAs are on Sunday. Check in here for all the red carpet looks. I will talk to you next Friday from Milan.
FASHION NEED-TO-KNOW |
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STYLE SETTERS | ||
Rachel Zoe Never Wanted to Be FamousThe woman who made stylists into celebrities is back where it all started — reality TV. By Max Berlinger |
Every week on Open Thread, Vanessa will answer a reader’s fashion-related question, which you can send to her anytime via email or X. Questions are edited and condensed.
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| Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol man in Minneapolis, in his greatcoat. Madison Swart/Reuters |
Clothes on their own are just pieces of cloth sewn into a pattern. It is the associations we attach to them that change how we see them — and how others see us in them.
Thus your reaction to the greatcoat, a standard piece of outerwear since the 18th century that has recently made an unexpected return to the political conversation.
A quick recap: Originally conceived as a sort of wearable blanket for military troops, the greatcoat became standard apparel for the British Army in World War I, which led to its wider adoption in the general population, as well as to its co-opting by the fashion world.
Designers were attracted to its sweep and swagger, much as they had been attracted to the trench coat, the peacoat, the aviator jacket and assorted other garments that had their roots in the military. But by removing such clothes from the battlefield and reinventing them in new fabrics, their wartime associations were dulled, and they were rendered costumes fit for the skirmish of a daily commute. At this point, they are essentially just another winter coat option. Or they were.
As the ICE raids picked up steam across the country, the greatcoat once again became a symbol of a military operation, thanks to Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol official who became a face of ICE and who made it part of his uniform. Between the purpose of the raids, with their racial subtext, and the way Bovino wore his coat — often with a black scarf, brass buttons and his buzz-cut hair — the look reminded many people on social media of the troops in Nazi Germany.
Thus the greatcoat took on new (or old) meaning.
While I can see why you would be leery of the association, and the idea that those around you might make an unwelcome or simply misguided connection, it is important to remember that all greatcoats are not created equal. At least in the eyes of their beholders.
The key here is how Bovino styled his coat and where he wore it. Take the coat out of that context, and you change its first impression. If you wore your greatcoat with a floral scarf — or even a scarf in a cheerful color — a knit hat and sneakers or some other nonmilitary footwear, I don’t think that the minds of most people would leap to ICE and the crisis in Minneapolis.
It’s worth remembering that fashion isn’t the only sector that repurposed military garb for its own ends. So have many protest movements, which consciously subverted the origin story of army uniforms by claiming them for their own, effectively altering their significance.
If, however, you can’t shake the association — if donning your coat makes you feel as if you are demonstrating kinship and support for an action that you abhor and betraying your values — it may be time to store the greatcoat. You can always retrieve in a few years, at which point it will probably have taken on whole new meaning.
For the moment, opt, perhaps, for a puffer or a parka, outerwear with mostly outdoor-rec associations rather than military associations. They will provide cover of a different kind.
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