A Youtube guide to New York Fashion Week.

Thanks to the snow storm that buried New York this weekend, watching Fashion Week from the comfort of your laptop is suddenly seeming a lot more appealing than being among the models and movie stars who have to freeze their extremities on the red carpet.

Not every Mercedes-Benz FashionWeek show is available online (this season, anyway), but there are still many to watch each day, including such big names as Vera Wang and Oscar de la Renta. If you don’t have time in your schedule for livestream viewings, we already have a few recommendations from the first couple of days of shows...

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New York Fashion Week, spring 2013: Proenza Schouler, Ralph Lauren, and more.

Proenza Schouler
The close-up shots from this show are far, far more interesting than the overall effect of each individual outfit. The silhouettes were boxy but chic, as I'd expect from any season of Proenza Schouler, but this kind of unique design detail is one of those moments where you can really understand why these clothes are so stupidly expensive. (Something that I don't alway believe when it comes to -- totally random example here, guys -- Calvin Klein's neverending supply of knee-length white dresses.)

Ralph Lauren
OK, this was one of those "Mediterranean" themed shows where there were either flamenco-style ruffles, black lace accents, or matador references on every single goddamn outfit. But instead of me posting all 62 very obviously Ralph Lauren-ish outfits plus their respective "Mediterranean" hats, instead we're going to talk about these trousers:

Guys, this is a VERY SPECIFIC STYLE that can potentially look very cool and retro, but only if you do it right. Also, I feel like it's a look that doesn't go very well with a skinny model's frame? 1930s/'40s riding breeches can look great if they're buttoned at the calves and are tightly fitted around the waist and hips, but if they're remotely un-shaped around the lower leg and are worn by someone with a very thin frame, you tend to get the effect of a recently-deflated balloon with a stick rattling around inside it. On the whole I don't think most women are likely to be in favour of an item of clothing that emphasises the hips and upper thighs anyway, so it's kind of important for it to fit correctly in the first place.

Vivienne Tam

Nicholas K
Tattooine is so in this season.

 

Kimberly Ovitz

I'm including this outfit not because I think it's particularly interesting or attractive in itself, but because a) it's another indication that hood-scarves are A Thing now, and b) this whole show was a perfect example of WTFM: "What The Fashion Muse??"

Kimberly Ovitz's entire Spring collection was reportedly inspired by a Kazakhstani performance artist who specialises in Russian Futurism and something to do with nomad culture. What I would like to know is, how do designers invariably manage to get from such esoteric beginnings to an end result of 37 near-identical white/beige shift-dresses? Karl Lagerfeld or Jean-Paul Gaultier can take a theme like "oranges" or "office supplies" and run with it, creating a collection of unparalleled weirdness and beauty, but I feel like at least half the time when designers try to attach an explicit theme to their work, it sounds like absolute nonsense. In fact, it wouldn't hugely surprise me if it turned out that some of the labels that turn out whole shows of skirts-and-shirts outfits just go on Wikipedia two hours before the show and pick out a random article to claim as the "muse" of their latest collection.

Peter Som
Cropped bra-shirts and high-waisted pencil skirts are a brilliantly flattering Spring trend that is sure to catch on like wildfire among the general populace. (Seriously though, I'm relatively slim myself but this outfit would still make me look like an overcooked sausage whose skin has split in the middle.)

Katie Gallagher
I WANT THIS OUTFIT. If I had it I'd wear it every day. No further commentary than that because technically speaking it's not all that interesting, but on the off-chance that any of you guys  know where I can get something that looks exactly like this but doesn't cost $$$? Call me. (Although I have a sneaking suspicion that the skirt is made of kangaroo skin. So, uh, not that particular detail.)

 

Richard Chai Love

Needs more gold, Aquaman.

Tadashi Shoji
Kate Middleton's latest picnic outfits.

Veronica Beard

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Spring 2013 at NYC Fashion Week: Duckie Brown, Zac Posen, Gary Graham, and more.

Duckie Brown
Containing enough plaid and denim to clothe several platoons of stereotypical lumberjacks (or, more likely, rich hipsters), Duckie Brown's latest collection was not for me. Having very little patience for double-deniming in general and catwalk fashion "explorations" of the ubiquitous jeans/plaid combination in particular, my favourite looks from this show were the weirder ones such as strangely-tailored mess of wrinkles and ruffles, which would have looked more at home at a Yohji Yamamoto show. The most memorable trend of the collection was the plethora of long strips of leather looped around the models' torsos (shoulder belts?), a non-functional accessory that I highly doubt will catch on.

pics from Style.com

Gary Graham
My love of short, bloomer-like pantaloon trousers is partially responsible for my love of Gary Graham's latest effort, but even beyond that one appealing component this collection is an intriguing combination of floaty weirdness and more down-to-earth hippie styles. The colour scheme and styling are distinctly earthy and unglamourous, which only serves to highlight the numerous details that are clearly founded in high-end craft fashion and impracticality.

BCBG Max Azria
Continuing on in what I can only describe as the Max Azria formula, this collection was full of angular, translucent monochrome dresses -- no real departure from what we've seen at most of their other Fashion Week shows in recent years. This season the emphasis was on leather harnesses worn over those dresses, an accessory brought over from the Herve Leger wing of the company.

Some of these looks worked better than others. The most geometric, grey, businesswear-infused outfits were my favourites, with the black gothic harness dresses coming in a close second. The dresses that tried to combine summery beach skirts with white leather didn't really work for me, but I'm sure that somewhere out there Gwyneth Paltrow is already calling her stylist to order some in for her next oh-so-casual vegan barbecue.

Z Spoke by Zac Posen
Another winning lookbook from Zac Posen's ongoing quest to make the ideal wardrobe for a vampire heiress's summer holiday in the Hamptons.

Featuring considerably fewer body-con dresses and figure-hugging Morticia Addams skirt suits than I expected, this collection was about as Spring-like as Zac Posen ever manages. On a different model I have no doubt that many of these outfits would've looked adorable and perfect for picnics with other beautiful people, but the inevitable 1950s gothic pinup styling meant that the idea of direct sunlight seemed like an anathema to Zac Posen's "Spring".

Coco Rocha (who is apparently only 23??) was the perfect Zac Posen model -- stick thin, white as snow, and with the kind of vampy aesthetic and attitude that transforms his comparatively simple floor-length evening gowns into dramatic Old Hollywood femme fatale outfits.

Creatures of the Wind
As usual, Creatures of the Wind failed to live up to its Miyazaki-esque title. And yet I still keep coming back...

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Girl Walk // All Day

I first heard about Anne Marsen via The Good Wife, because I'm the kind of square who learns about viral-video street dance phenomena via TV shows about lawyers. In The Good Wife and, as far as I can tell, in the real world, Anne Marsen is a charming-badass-weird improvisational dancer who combines talent and training with an irresistable aura of total balls-out glee. Marsen started off in classical ballet before she quit and began to study as wide a variety of dance styles as New York City could provide. Girl Wall//All Day, the feature-length dance video inspired by Girl Talk's mashup album All Day, mirrors this journey to a certain extent, with the heroine freaking out during a ballet class and fleeing for the Staten Island Ferry in a jacket stolen from her teacher

All Day by Girl Talk is, first of all, a brilliant album. I'd been listening to it for months before I had any idea that there was an accompanying film, so I can confirm that it stands up on its own. You can download it free from Girl Talk's homepage or (as I prefer, because I'm a geek) listen on Mashup Breakdown, where each component sample is highlighted onscreen while you listen. But Girl Walk//All Day transforms each track into more than just sections of a great album -- they become memorable moments of a narrative. Girl Walk is very much a product of the internet and remix culture: funded on Kickstarter, produced with no official involvement from the creator of the (free to download) mashup album it's based on, and screened on Vimeo.

The jacket The Girl steals from her dance instructor is iconic enough that it was chosen as the logo of the film. She wears it for the first couple of chapters, a symbol of her don't-give-a-fuck attitude, weird and out-of-place as she dances through the crowds at the ferry terminal and out into the city.

One of the things that makes Girl Walk so entertaining is the fact that it embraces the hand-shot Youtube video culture, with all the pitfalls and unscriptable moments of true improvisation. Improv Everywhere's videos (motto: "We Cause Scenes") are so ubiquitously viral that I expect most people reading this will either have seen one, or some kind of advert that plays off the flashmob craze. Successful feel-good viral videos, like jokes, tend to rely on the element of surprise, whether it's fifty people breaking into song in a suburban shopping mall or a girl dancing fearlessly through crowds of tourists and commuters, and Girl Walk manages to sustain this for 72 minutes. And because the audience for a 72-minute improvisational mashup dance movie is most likely made up of the reality TV/Youtube generation, we're invited to notice and accept that yes, the camera person does exist, that this is more like documentary footage than pure fiction. When any of the dancers are further away from the camera, you know for sure that the reactions of the people around them must be genuine, because how could spectators even know they're being filmed? Sometimes the camera will be on one side of the street, filming The Girl as she dances unselfconsciously through the crowds on the other. Most of the participants in this movie are bystanders: laughing, gawking or attempting to ignore the crazy girl dancing to music (it's fairly likely) only she can hear.

The idea of a full-length film of a girl dancing through New York does, I admit, sound a little on the cutesy side. But honestly, even my cynical British self didn't feel a fraction of the discomfort I experience when put into contact with something by Zooey Deschanel and the rest of the Free Hugs brigade. The Girl of Girl Walk may be charmingly child-like in parts, but she's not remotely infantilised. She's childlike in the splashing-through-mud sense, in the sense that she's openly doing what she wants and not caring what other people think about it, but she's not a Manic Pixie Dreamgirl.

Aside from the few street-dancers The Girl meets on her travels, the other principal characters are The Gentleman and The Creep. While The Girl's style is a jumble of music video references, sloppy improv and classical training, The Gentleman and The Creep are more traditional street-dancers. To the casual observor, The Girl might give the impression of being a nonprofessional dancer having a total bug-out in public (at one point she's even escorted from a NYC landmark by the police), but The Gentleman and The Creep are a little more conventional, which only serves to highlight the freshness of her style.

The Gentleman lives up to his name. Dressed in a pristine white shirt and wearing a fedora, his style harks back to the golden age of musicals. He's also something of a silent movie hero: romantic, distant, and beset by difficulty. As a side-note, I particularly appreciated how in Girl Walk's trailer, The Girl is described as "courting" The Gentleman as opposed to being courted by him. Instead of the expected Male Gaze moment where the the camera might pan up and down The Girl to signify The Gentleman's interest, The Girl spots him dancing at the park, and, well:

You'll have noticed that by this point, The Girl's first costume change has taken place. When samples from Beyonce's Single Ladies appear in the mashup -- one of the most memorable music video dances of the past few years -- The Girl persuades some passers-by to act as her backing dancers, and in true diva style their resulting performance requires a costume change. The black leotard and leggings may be a reference to Beyonce's own outfit in the video, but more likely they just provide a comfortable basic backdrop to her cheerful pink blouse, another outfit that makes it easy for us to pick her out of the crowds.

The Girl and The Gentleman travel together for a while, taking part in an impromptu subway dance party with commuters including this gentleman:
Like Anne Marsen, the dancer playing the part of The Creep has a real skill for physical comedy. His moves are a mixture between body-popping street-dance and Looney Tunes villain. He sports a skeleton tracksuit, for extra added evil:

The Creep, as his name suggests, is a creeper, following The Girl until she (with a little help from The Gentleman) discourages him. When he first meets her, the heart on his skeleton shirt becomes exposed, but is that necessarily a good thing?

Not being a New Yorker, I'm sure there are many locational details and in-jokes that I'm missing in Girl Walk. However, there is one thing I did recognise: an accidental cameo from Bill Cunningham. Girl Walk's camera person catches the back of the famous photographer's head for a few seconds as he comes across The Creep dancing outside a department store.

The Girl's next transformation comes via a shopping spree through various famous shops, making her over into a New York fashionista. Amusingly, her over-the-top Paris Hilton strut down the street draws more stares than outright dancing had done earlier, maybe because in this case it's harder to tell whether she's for real or not. Later on comes one of my favourite parts of the film, when The Girl, still in character as her newly commercialised New York self and laden down with designer shopping bags, comes across the Occupy Wall Street protesters.

The Shopping Spree sequence was an interesting moment for me because it made me realise how odd it was to have watched a woman dance for so long and not throw any "sexy" moves. Along with a hot new outfit bought from some glossy NYC department store, The Girl's dance style makes a brief foray into sexy pop routines before returning to its usual free-for-all.

The final change is sparked on by The Girl meeting a child who rejects all of The Girl's new purchases, making her realise the importance of things that aren't Louboutins:

The Girl's last outfit is by far the weirdest-looking, and is perfect for when she joins the far more exotically-dressed crowds of people dancing through the streets in a passing city parade. This costume includes traditional elements of dance clothes (leotard, leggings and a tutu-like skirt) and the colour-scheme of the jacket she was wearing in the first act, combining her roots with her rebellion.

Girl Walk//All Day is 12 chapters long -- one sequence for each track -- and can be viewed here in its entirety, although if you're a US resident they seem to be holding live screenings/dance parties in some cities. I recommend one chapter per day before breakfast, as a panacaea against the horrors of real life.

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