By Alicia Powell
NEW YORK (Reuters) – This year’s New York Fashion Week will open with emerging designers from New York Men’s Day and new collections from Proenza Schouler.
From Sept. 9 to Sept. 14 more than 140 designer showcases will take place in various locations around New York City.
The highlights this season include two Italian fashion houses.
“Fendi and Marni are coming to New York, which is super exciting. Fendi is doing a special 25th anniversary show to celebrate their baguette bag, and Marni’s is bringing their spring/summer show… from Milan to New York,” said fashion director Nora Milch at W Magazine.
Milch said fewer big luxury American brands are participating.
“They either have kind of moved to and started showing in Paris or they show off calendar. So, it’s created a lot more room for excitement and energy around the younger brands, the younger designers.”
One of the designers taking advantage of that shift is Stephanie Crowchild, an indigenous fashion designer from Tsuu T’ina First Nation who will make her debut at the Rise NYFW show on Friday.
Crowchild’s brand, Eagletail Designs, specializes in custom-made jackets utilizing wool blankets from companies such as Hudson’s Bay and Pendleton.
“I like to really replicate the way they wore their clothing back in, you know, like the 1800s to the early 1900s. And I just turn it into my own, like, modern, modern style,” said Crowchild.
The designer started her business in 2020 after battling alcohol addiction, and used sewing as a form of healing.
Crowchild noted that many indigenous people had been killed by smallpox-infected blankets in colonial times.
“To utilize the blankets in the form that I do today is, you know, very powerful. And just that reminder, you know, that, yeah, that we’re still here.”
Tom Ford will close out the week of shows, after having to cancel last season because of COVID.
(Reporting by Alicia Powell; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)
