With one more day of New York shows, it’s safe to say that American sportswear has been the theme of the week. It could be that in moments of turmoil—economic, social, and otherwise—designers return to what they know. Or maybe it’s about staking a claim. The country has lost its way, but this is what it stands for, fashionably speaking: practicality, comfort, and everyday chic.
In any case, backstage at the Museum of Modern Art, Tory Burch was pledging her love for American sportswear, and admitting to being a bit perplexed about why New York is persistently the second (or third) city of fashion after Paris (and Milan). “Sportswear started here,” after all, she said.
For anyone curious about the category’s origins, the fashion historian and journalist Nancy MacDonell has written an informative new book on the subject, Empresses of Seventh Avenue. Burch herself made a study of one of its early practitioners, Claire McCardell, in the not too distant past, but this season she was after something a bit less direct, something more “twisted,” as she put it. The idea was to identify wardrobe classics and tweak them. It might mean leaving the shirt seams unfinished so they can be pulled up the arm, draped across the shoulders, and secured with a golden brooch. Or designing leather jackets with multiple snap-closure pockets of different sizes, obviating the need for a handbag, though she also showed fun bags with the same kinds of pockets.
Burch’s instinct to play and push things has been strong these last few seasons, and it has occasionally made for challenging garments. She got the balance between experiment and ease right with velvet pants woven with metal for a rumpled, lived-in kind of look, and hourglass dresses with necklines that spilled off one shoulder with what looked like lucky rabbit feet and gold chains hanging from the other—now that’s twisted! On other pieces, the twist was merely that Burch used unexpected materials for familiar pieces, like brushed wool for sweatpants, or the sheer mesh overlays she added to blazers.
I particularly liked the padded nylon coat and jacket cinched tight around the waist with oversize stick pins—the way they gripped the midsection looked like the kind of thing a woman would do in real life to strike the right attitude. The soundtrack featured a mesmerizing laugh track by Charlotte Adigéry & Bolis Pupul that seemed to reinforce the world-is-twisted scenario; what else can we do but respond in kind?
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