The usually ebullient crowd at Duckie Brown was a tad quieter this afternoon. As guests waited for the show begin, conversation inevitably led to the death of Alexander McQueen. In an unexpected Hitchockian twist, two lost sparrows flew among the crowd, causing people in the front row to duck manically while in the middle of conversations.
The dub music that opened Duckie Brown's Fall 2010 show gave it all away: the '80s rude boy is back. The fitted pants paired with boots and oversized jackets brought a new spin to the shrunken suit stylings popularized by Thom Browne. Duckie Brown upped the sartorial references by adding a ska edge to the mod influences.
The once-private fashion show generates enormous public interest. But the near-instant exposure comes with a side-effect: Designers are finding that the immediacy of runway images can make clothes feel dated by the time they hit stores.
"It's bittersweet," Proenza Schouler's Jack McCollough says. "[Accessibility] gets more people interested in fashion because it's more reachable. But at the same time, it's there faster so people get bored of it quickly." He adds that knock-off companies get a jump-start on sending out copies before the originals even hit the market.
The Fall 2009 collections that premiered for the press and buyers at last week's New York fashion week were created last fall, amid lackluster consumer confidence and slashed retail prices.
Many designers said that because of this, they tried to straddle pragmatic business options (making sure to include classic black trousers, in Duckie Brown's case, for example) with eye-popping looks that tugged at consumer's heart-strings (Diane von Furstenberg's luxe coats). We asked a few designers how they designed for the downturn.
For many designers at New York fashion week, finding a sponsor during a recessionary economy was much harder than in seasons past.
"I was having a lot of difficulty raising money for the show this season -- it's more difficult than ever before," says Daniel Silver, one of the designers at menswear brand Duckie Brown. Although Duckie Brown obtained a sponsorship from Florsheim shoes, it didn't cover the entire cost of the show, which can run upwards of $100,000, Mr. Silver said. Mr. Silver and his design partner Stephen Cox decided to consider every company they had ever worked for. At the end, they joined up with McDonald's, who was looking to promote its new line of McCafe coffee drinks. Mr. Cox had worked at McDonald's in London as a cashier when he was 16 years old.
