Fashion Week in New York City is in full swing, and with this year’s move to Lincoln Center has fashion fanatics buzzing about the new location! While getting access to these events can be a tough feat for the ‘average joe’, PUBLIC’s own Topher Burns had an opportunity to attend the Yuna Yang show last Saturday.
Saturday’s Yuna Yang show succeeded because it gracefully inserted itself into the tension that stretched especially taut on the day of the presentation (September 11th).
Poised between summer and fall, this season’s New York Fashion Week seems especially timed as to flirt with being irrelevant, indulgent while of course undeniably exciting, and the nexus of now.
I happen to really love fashion, but I could certainly see the author’s point when a recent Forbes article asked ” What Decade Are They Living In?” Current events, though by no means calamitous, might seem momentous enough to require the fashion industry to adopt a more subdued public statement of its own importance. With the heavily disputed “Ground Zero Mosque” site just a scant few miles down the road, Giselle’s triumphant stomp could certainly sound hollow to some.
Fortunately I am not one of those people who think celebrations and art aren’t appropriate in stressful times. Pour me a mimosa and let’s get this show started! Yuna Yang obliged on both accounts.
Her hype (pointed out by both New York Magazine and WWD as a designer to watch) is well deserved. I found a canny complexity in her spring/summer 2011 collection: “My Black Wedding Dress”. Yang’s inspiration, she says, came from Betty Draper. The 60’s housewife, pulled between the traditions of the 50’s and the liberty of the 70’s, found elegant expression in Yang’s collection. Though the pieces were modest, they were also alluring – an uneasy balance that seems especially appropriate right now.
The fuzzy grayness of a cloudy day lent a subtle glow to the lace and sequin accents that drifted down a runway at the private outdoor park of the Hudson Hotel, set to unmistakably Parisian music.
Champagne bubbles tickling my brain, I left Yuna Yang’s show singing “La Vie En Rose” to myself, even though it had not been played during the presentation. Thinking back now, both to the collection and to its cultural context, I find that very apropos.
-Topher
