BULLETT

The problem with Spring NYFW is that it comes before the summer has even ended. It’s been a hot one here: sticky, humid, way too long. We are tired of summer, just starting to feel the not-hot breezes that tell us that soon we’ll be able to think about jackets again. And we’re letting ourselves get excited about closed-toe shoes and sweaters and then—we have to skip the fall fantasy and start projecting into next summer. Oh well. Here’s some of our favorites from day one of New York Fashion Week.

Rachel Comey
In my pre-orgasmic teenage days, I once had a boyfriend remark that he’d never seen me as sexually exuberant as I was while gazing upon a pair of mod Chanel white leather booties with that black leather cap toe and oh baby, I need you now. Watching a Rachel Comey presentation, the eye can’t help but return to the foot, in the same way the eye can’t help but return to the chest of a woman in cleavage baring clothes; the goods we’re after are on display, we’re going to look at them. The clothes she showed were easy-as-in-effortless, sexy, graceful, what the woman who’s too busy to think about what she wants to wear in the morning wants. But the shoes—in the MFK game, we’d marry and F ‘em, and they kill us. A silver lame bootie that cuts just below the ankle’s skinniest circumference… nude oxfords perched atop a wood clog platform… elegant, strappy, sheen, slender, heel… I need you now.

Katie Gallagher
With her enviably stringy platinum locks and panda warrior eye makeup, Katie Gallagher looks like a real life incarnation of Gossip Girl’s Jenny Humphrey. Gallagher first came to the fashion world’s attention with Spring 2010, around the same time that angsty, aspiring fashion designer character, the goth-grunge-chic Lil’ J, was been weaned off the show (read Jonathan Lethem’s Chronic City to appreciate the simulacra, RL vs. virtual, slippage of NYC, and that Humphrey/Gallagher temporal convergence).

Gallagher designs the kind of clothes that look good on Gallagher. The silhouettes are tight and bodycon or draped off a rail-thin body. Crop tops and cutouts. Black, white, cream, and beige. Sheer, shirred, and leather. This season looked the same as others. Gallagher is cultivating, like forerunners Ann Demeulemeester and Rick Owens, an aseasonal (no seasons post-apocalypse) aesthetic. Her clothes look cool. She looks cool. We just aren’t all knock-knee skinny enough to look as cool in them as she does.

Honor
Speaking of Gossip Girl (this is NYFW after all), Honor’s Giovanna Randall gave us 38 looks with the staid sexuality, the prim, the feminine, the Victorian undo me, of Blair Waldorf at her costumed best: high ruffle and bow collars, narrow waists, and skirts and tops voluminous enough to hide really, really good lingerie underneath. We loved it topped with those wayfarer sunglasses. The patterns were drawn from muscle fibers and florals. Besides Blair, who else can we see in Honor Spring 2013? Chloe Sevigny, Kate Middleton.

Organic by John Patrick
Organic means of or pertaining to or derived from living material, and John Patrick’s collection is just that —  material we want to live in. Sure, the wide cut of the garments made the models proportions look closer to John Patrick’s than 5’11/34-24-34. But, the suit looks especially, were so natural, fluid, and refreshing, you can already feel the brush of fabric against your striding legs.