“All art - symphonies, architecture, novels - it’s all puzzles,” Stephen Sondheim once said.
But, ultimately, his work expresses one of the truest beliefs. His new collection introduced softer elements and more color - subdued rose and amber, along with silver for a blouson jacket and shorts - to the brand, which started out mostly in black and navy. But at a time when other designers are embracing minimalism, Helbers does it with greater assurance and know-how.
Helber’s minimalism obviously connects him to Halston and Zoran, whose simple, unstructured forms were in defiance of the stuffy, high-tone fashion coming out of European and Seventh-Avenue houses in the 1970s and ’80s. Paul Helbers, a designer with years of experience - the studios of Maison Margiela, Marc Jacobs during his early period at Louis Vuitton, and The Row - started Fforme a little more than a year ago, and he put on the brand’s first runway show on Sunday.
In terms of their fashion, if they keep mining this rich vein of style, they will become designers that people will confidently turn to every season to say something new and interesting. It took the designers ten years of false starts to create the perfect low-key symbol, which was done in-house by the brand’s print designer and will eventually be used for hardware on accessories - and anything else that might inspire the designers. And they’ve developed a monogram: two Ps that together form an S. For the first time, Proenza will produce jeans, a nicely cut boyfriend style that will come in several washes including a bleached-out version that leaves a few indigo blotches. Low-healed shoes and a natural shoulder line help that effect. Hernandez and McCollough generally set their proportions a bit below the waist, for a more relaxed vibe. The style also relates to how most women dress - choosing separates over a total look and being attracted to something because of the attitude it projects. This is the second season in a row that McCollough and Hernandez have embraced the classic elements of sportswear, and it’s why their designs suddenly have a real charge, belated or not. In the process, as McCollough admitted, “You can lose touch with the woman.” And Proenza Schouler has made clothes like that in the past, but the designers have jumped around so much over their 21-year careers, as they tried to please editors, that those styles got buried. Those clothes are the essence of sportswear. “We’ve never made clothes like this before,” Hernandez said. The designers also did dresses in an ultralightweight technical nylon that has no more than a few seams and which you pop over your head and tie up, obi-style, in the back. They also had a plain, zip-up jacket in white cotton that could have functioned as a shirt, and their pantsuits were mismatched - that is, a white jacket with, say, a pair of bleached jeans. On Saturday, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez of Proenza Schouler showed a cropped crewneck sweater with a dark pair of boyfriend-cut jeans that rode a little low on the hips. Sometimes in fashion, as with rock ’n’ roll, you don’t appreciate a style until another designer puts it out there. And who does sportswear better than America? We didn’t invent it, but it’s the style that Americans increasingly turned to European fashion, during the 1930s and 1940s - thanks to such innovators as Claire McCardell and Tina Leser. “Mainly what I care about most now is to give importance to what is modest, to value modest jobs, simple jobs,” Prada explained to journalists.Īlthough nobody said so at the time, those shirt dresses and crewnecks are sportswear.
Last season, they drew inspiration from different kinds of uniforms. You trust them to do something new and interesting. That’s because Miuccia Prada and Raf Simons, her co-creative director, have authority. Photo: Courtesy of Proenza/Madison Voelkel/Go RunwayĪlmost anything on the Prada runways becomes high concept, even a white cotton shirt dress that looks like a nurse’s uniform or a crewneck sweater worn with classic slacks. From left: Fforme, Proenza Schouler, Eckhaus Latta.
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