KCD wants to revolutionize the runway, and you can watch it all unfold on your laptop or iPad. The public-relations powerhouse, which manages high-end labels such as Gucci, Versace, Alexander McQueen, Alexander Wang, Chanel, and Diane von Furstenberg, announced Monday that it will produce a number of fashion shows in a purely digital format. Coming on the heels of a recent show date “crisis”—a result of Milan pushing back the dates for its September shows—KCD is pitching the invitation-only Internet platform as an alternative to the increasingly crowded schedules that pull editors and store buyers in multiple, often opposing, directions. (Cue the usual gripes about aching feet.) Set to launch during New York Fashion Week, Digital Fashion Shows will debut with Prabal Gurung’s inaugural ICB collection on February 15, although his signature label will appear more conventionally on the catwalk.
6 Hot Trends at New York Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2012
Watch Leanne Marshall’s Spring/Summer 2012 Runway Show at New York Fashion Week
No matter how talented the photographer, stills can never do a runway show justice—they’re meant to be experienced, swinging steps, insouciant expressions and all. Nowhere is this more evident than Leanne Marshall’s Spring/Summer 2012 presentation at New York Fashion Week. The Season 5 Project Runway winner delivered a technicolor explosion of frocks that, in a word, rocked. Get up close and personal with the eco-chic collection from our front-row POV and listen in as Marshall spills some of her green design secrets. …
Justin Gignac’s “Waste Cubes” Illustrate NY Fashion Week’s Trashy Side
11 Hot Green Designers at New York Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2012
EDUN Launches “Pioneers” Project to Showcase Men of Style, Substance (Including TOMS’s Blake Mycoskie!) at New York Fashion Week
Suzanne Rae Returns to Simpler Times With Her Spring 2012 Line at New York Fashion Week
Photos by Amanda Coen for Ecouterre
Earthquakes, nuclear meltdowns, stock-market crashes; is it any wonder that Suzanne Rae yearns for simpler times? Showcasing her Spring/Summer 2012 collection at New York Fashion Week on Monday, the Brooklyn designer delivered a convergence of bikinis, playsuits, and fluttery gowns—constructed from organic cotton, recycled hemp, raw silk, and even raffia—on a platform that was more boardwalk than runway. Her nostalgia for the past was apparent: Paired with tai-chi flats and Tumbleweeds sunglasses made in San Diego from remnant woods, Rae’s beachy, laid-back looks ushered a rare moment of calm amidst the tumult.
(Sustainable) Fashion’s Night Out Puts an Eco-Chic Twist on Consumption
Ecouterre contributor Kestrel Jenkins and photographer Amanda Coen in clothing by Adri, Amanda’s grandmother. Kestrel is also wearing a necklace borrowed from Inhabitat communications manager Rebecca Paul, (which belonged to her grandmother) and a bracelet from her own …
Chris Benz’s Spring 2012 Line Brings ’60s Psychedelia to New York Fashion Week
Photos by Yuka Yoneda for Ecouterre
Imagine for a moment, if you will, that the Stepford Wives hired the Merry Pranksters from the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test as their personal stylists. The result would bear more than a passing resemblance to Chris Benz’s Spring/Summer 2012, which debuted at Lincoln Center during New York Fashion Week on Monday. With their gently teased Elizabeth Taylor hair, boxy shoulder pads, and psychedelic ’60s-inspired threads, Benz’s beauties were a screwball combo of Jackie O. meets Karen O. We also spotted some of Benz’s celebrity fans rally their support for the flamingo-haired Prince of Color, one of the few designers who manufactures almost exclusively in the United States.
VIDEO EXCLUSIVE: Costello Tagliapietra Spring 2012 Runway at New York Fashion Week
Jeffrey Costello and Robert Tagliapietra had one thing in mind when they started designing their Spring/Summer 2012 collection and that was romance. With their ice-blue Grecian gowns and Georgia O’Keefe-inspired floral prints, we, for one, were wooed completely. Watch their new styles in action in our exclusive video above, and hear what the always stylish-in-plaid designers had to say about their perfectly draped creations.
Suno Glams Its Spring/Summer 2012 Collection Up for New York Fashion Week
Photos by Don Brodie for Ecouterre
Suno’s Max Osterweis and Erin Beatty have never shied from clashing, prismatic prints that almost appear etched in fabric. At their inaugural runway show at New York Fashion Week, however, the mood was noticeably more subdued, although the pared-back tack had …
Announcing the Winners of the Second Annual CFDA/Lexus Eco-Fashion Challenge
Duro Olowu’s Spring 2012 Line Delivers Optimism Through Adversity at New York Fashion Week
Photos by Amanda Coen for Ecouterre
Wall Street may be experiencing more tumbles than a roomful of tots at Gymboree, but the mood at Duro Olowu's Spring/Summer 2012 show at New York Fashion Week was anything but downbeat. The U.K.-based designer had camera bulbs flashing wildly as models preened and posed in front of a stark white backdrop at Milk Studios on Saturday. Inspired by the work of photographer Jacques Henri Lartigue and the West Indian immigrants who arrived in England in the '50s—Olowu's mother among them—the collection is a visual feast of reclaimed silks and vintage fabric trims in eclectic, contrasting patterns.EDUN Offers Africa With an Edge at Spring 2012 New York Fashion Week (Video)
Photos by Amanda Coen for Ecouterre
As one might expect from its rock-star provenance, EDUN offers altruism with an edge. But although U2 frontman Bono and his wife, Ali Hewson, founded the label to buttress the languishing economies of Kenya, Uganda, and Mali, it's shied away from making its African connection too literal in its clothes. At the Spring/Summer 2012 show at New York Fashion Week on Sunday, however, Sharon Wauchob, a year into her creative directorship under Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, appears to have belayed that order by presenting one of EDUN's most "ethnic" collections to date.Mara Hoffman’s Spring 2012 Collection Brings the Tropics to New York Fashion Week
Photos by Amanda Coen for Ecouterre
Mara Hoffman is known for her bohemian flair, so the presence of a live mariachi band at her Spring/Summer 2012 show wasn't the least incongruous. Presented at the Box at Lincoln Center during New York Fashion Week, Hoffman's self-described "Mexican Mamas" featured a bevy of designs inspired by the women of Mexico, particularly legendary painter Frida Kahlo. Using custom-designed silk prints manufactured in-house in the United States, Hoffman interlaced woodcut, tribal, woven, and geometric designs with neon embroidery and seed-beading to create a sultry, tropical-infused lineup of jumpsuits (long and short), sheer skirts, caftans, and tea-length column dresses.Leanne Marshall’s Spring 2012 Line Offers Girlish Sophistication at New York Fashion Week
Photos by Jill Fehrenbacher and Amanda Coen for Ecouterre
Against the onslaught of real housewives and Kardashians, Leanne Marshall's brand of youthful elegance fills a precarious but necessary niche. And, at the showing of her Spring/Summer 2012 line at New York Fashion Week on Saturday, the Season 5 Project Runway winner showed us why sophistication will always trump flash. Billowy confections, architecturally sculptured in layers of traditional silk, hemp silk, bamboo jersey, and organic cotton, fluttered down the runway in searing combinations of ivory, lavender, and highlighter yellow. "I was inspired by the feeling of going to the beach or vacationing in the South of France," Marshall tells Ecouterre. "I wanted to capture the way the wind moved through the sand."Costello Tagliapietra’s Spring 2012 Line Embraces Romance, AirDye Technology at New York Fashion Week
Photos by Jill Fehrenbacher for Ecouterre
With their matching plaid-flannel shirts, suspenders, and full beards and mustaches, Jeffrey Costello and Robert Tagliapietra are unlikely advocates for femininity. Yet you'd be hard-pressed to describe their Spring/Summer 2012 lineup at New York Fashion Week on Friday any other way. Dresses of every description, clad in heady florals or lustrous solids, slinked across the runway. "We kept thinking of this one word; we kept thinking of 'romance," Tagliapietra tells Ecouterre.Gretchen Jones is Guilty as Charged at New York Fashion Week Spring 2012
Photos by Amanda Coen for Ecouterre
As one of Project Runway's most polarizing contestants, Gretchen Jones can't be blamed for feeling a little, well, persecuted1. So it's perhaps fitting that her Spring/Summer 2012 show—her first solo presentation at New York Fashion Week—took the form of a police lineup; her way of acknowledging, perhaps, the controversy with a giant wink and nod. Accompanied by the bluesy twangs of the Nouveau Classical Project and the unlikely services of a smoke machine, the 20 models presented a layered array of drapey, color-block separates in desert hues; ankle-grazing prairie skirts in hallucinogenic prints; and pinstripe-denim pageboy shorts, hems angled precipitously to suggest one of Jones's signature motifs, the chevron.1Jill's note: And we don't blame her, considering that Project Runway was edited to create drama out of less-than-dramatic circumstances.
John Patrick Organic’s Spring 2012 Line Finds Adventure at New York Fashion Week
Photos by Jill Fehrenbacher for Ecouterre
No one can accuse Organic's John Patrick of being a Johnny-come-lately. Showcasing his Spring/Summer 2012 collection a full day before New York Fashion Week's official launch, the eco-fashion pioneer invited his guests on a journey of exploration and adventure to untouched lands far away. Amidst the eclectic historical decor of the West Village's sailor-shack-turned-hotel The Jane, onlookers reveled in one of Patrick's most streamlined collections yet: classic, timeless, and chic, yet devoid of excessive trendiness. (Like the desert-boot wedges that the models donned, the pieces espouse utility with flair.)M. Patmos Gets Fresh for Spring/Summer 2012 at New York Fashion Week
Tour de Fashion: Borrow a Designer-Customized Bike During New York Fashion Week
Have a Sustainable Fashion’s Night Out at the Textile Arts Center on Sept. 8
As intoxicating as a global shopping spree sounds, we have to turn a gimlet eye to the rampant consumerism Fashion Night’s Out promotes. For the rest of us—those of us who don’t want to sit at home and mope, that is—(Sustainable) Fashion’s Night Out offers …



















































































































































































































































































































































