What I liked at fashion week
More head coverings, please
Getting high and clicking through a bunch of slideshows of clothes is basically my definition of the best want to unwind after a long day. So it’s not a stretch to say that fashion week is usually one of my favorite times of year.
Except that this year, the shows mostly sucked. It seems like everyone has either run out of ideas and is just redoing old stuff or has seen too much weird girl aesthetic and mushed all their ideas together to create looks that are somehow both totally insane and completely uninspired. I’ve never seen such bland fashion.
The standout exception was the angelic, transcendent Mirror Palais show. I’ve been following Mirror Palais on IG for a while now, and it’s been inspiring to see their growth from fresh and fun bikinis that I’d only seen on instagram to a well-known brand making their first NYFW show.
Their debut runway show did not disappoint. There were many things to love in this show (I encourage you to look through the entire collection), but what really stood out to me was the incorporation of hoods and veils across the collection.
Let’s take a look:
Obsessed is an understatement.
For me, the veiled motif brings the clothes out of a purely aesthetic realm and grounds them. I think this is the first fashion show that has inspired me to not only think about how the clothes look but also how they would feel.
I’ve always loved hoodies because I love the way the hood feels, how it can create a sensation of comfort and enclosure at a moment's notice. It’s like a weighted blanket for my head. A hood narrows my field of vision and softens my perception by muffling outside sounds, partitioning off a space that belongs to me alone.
As I admire these clothes, I also ask myself, what would it feel like to wear this? How might these delicate, flowing veils elicit similar sensations to a hoodie, and how would their different materials modify these feelings? In what settings might I want to take the hood off? Would I feel naked and exposed when I removed it after wearing it all day? How would these pieces feel different on a cool day than a warm one? On a calm afternoon or a stormy morning? How would sight and sound ebb and flow in the wind?
In a business driven by pure aesthetics, it was refreshing to see a motif that brought my attention to the tactile, embodied aspect of the clothes. With a simple head covering, designer Marcelo Gaia created unity within the collection and between each item of clothing and the body that wears it.
I also spotted hoods and veils on the Versace runway in Milan. Gigi Hadid and Imaan Hamman wore all-black hooded ensembles.
These looks reminded me of similar all-black hooded dresses that were recently sported by Sofia Carson at the VMAs and Katie Holmes at Tom Ford (which I <3 Mess described as “looking like a very chic dementor”, lol).
Versace also did a few hood iterations in purple.
Another unique head covering graced the Versace runway, this time colored veils with tiaras worn by many models including Bella Hadid and Paris Hilton. While we’ve already seen this rhinestone dress look many times from Paris (and seen it copied by just about everyone), I liked the fresh element that was added by the veil-tiara combo.
In this case, the veil adds a palpable sense of both division and unity. The contrast between Bella (with her face covered) and Paris (with her veil flowing behind her) brings attention to the different worlds inhabited by the viewer and the wearer.
And, of course, both of these veils strongly resemble a bridal veil. In western tradition, a bride walks down the aisle shrouded in a veil before revealing her uncovered face at the altar. Once married, with her veil now drawn back, she leaves not as an individual but as a part of a union. This sheer barrier is a material representation of a liminal state at which the individual is temporarily dissolved as part of a rite of passage.
I’ll be keeping my fingers crossed for more high-fashion head coverings.