February 14, 2017 |
There’s something of the cult to Eckhaus Latta. Not in the sense that the whole thing’s going to end with PIG being scrawled on the wall in the blood of Sharon Tate and thinking “oops” but in that slightly washed out, pieced-together look that comes from (slightly too close) communal living. Have you seen that film Martha Marcy May Marlene? A bit like that. But whatever way you look at this, we think Eckhaus Latta (aka Zoe Latta and Mike Eckhaus) are really very brilliant. Call them New York’s new guard. And this season, the unavoidable menace was Trump. The duo have always had a sort of politically charged thing about them, and this time the anti was upped – as the jumper worn by photographer Collier Schorr, who walked the runway, ominously read: “Is This What You Wanted”, so too the dress that India Mendes closed the show in (note: she’s gorgeous!). But this was not the protest wear other designers have chosen to make there point – this had a far more optimistic streak – plenty of colour, bright but somehow muted, floral prints, the great duvet skirts that unbuttoned at the front. Eckhaus Latta are facing the future head on. Call it imagining their very own utopia.
Photographs by Jason Lloyd-Evans
