It’s been 30 years since Stella Ishii set up shop at her space in SoHo. Not one to necessarily look back, Ishii reflects on her time fondly; she’s one to share anecdotes for the sake of context rather than nostalgia.
That this 6397 lineup features callbacks to the aughts comes by the hand of Ishii’s lead designer, Lizzie Owens. Working side by side, Ishii and Owens describe their collections for 6397 as “conversations.” Ishii has always shaped 6397 as a reflection of her own sartorial fascinations, referencing her own wardrobe, her vintage finds, and making the things she’d like to wear. What Owens has added to the equation, rather compellingly, is a sense of nuance, widening the spectrum of what constitutes as a 6397 piece.
Owens moved to New York in 2005, she said at a preview. Fall found her reflecting on what she and her generational cohort were wearing back then, with Y2K at its all-time high—arguably only until now, thanks to TiKTok. But Owens’s nostalgia is one of lived experience rather than induced by an Instagram scroll, and rather than remake hits from the 2000s, she’s looked at Y2K as a language. There are acid washes on denim skirts, which were cut with no waistbands similarly to how Mariah Carey would cut off the tops of her jeans way back when; a run of tracksuits in vibrant colors, worn both as a set or mixed in with sportswear; Wall Street pinstripe suits with short lapels; and, new for 6397, a logo repeat skirt that, rather than a monogram, looks like a poster graphic from the time. There is a new edge to this collection that makes it enticing; see a denim jacket and jeans set that have both been dipped in plastic to emulate the patina of an old leather piece.
The term Y2K has little meaning to Ishii, who by then had been in New York for just over a decade. She remembers the time less for its fashion and more for the aftermath of 9/11. From the floor-to-ceiling windows at her SoHo showroom, Ishii has seen the city—and the industry—pull itself back together time and time again. By looking at the same point in time but from different perspectives, Ishii and Owens balance an interesting dichotomy in their clothes, that of the lived-in New York versus the new New York. Not unlike a New Yorker who has experienced the ebbs and flows and highs and lows of calling this city one’s home, the familiar softness 6397 is still here, but now with a little hardness to its shell.
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