It was the night before Valentine’s Day, and Christian Cowan had hearts in his eyes. “I just really, really, really love this collection. I went about it in a very different way to what I’ve done before,” he said.
One marked difference was the luxury of time—and the creative freedom borne from not feeling so rushed. Cowan, standing in a stairwell in a studio in West Chelsea before his show, said it’s never been harder to be a young, independent brand with the rising cost of, well, everything. (When the music briefly cut out later, before his models’ finale walk, that reality came to mind.)
But slowing down to really revel in the storytelling served Cowan well—perhaps it was influenced by recently creating Broadway costumes for the first time, and also working on wardrobing a film that will come out later this year. His runway characters were a reinterpretation of vintage glamourpusses, and Cowan had gone all in on sourcing archival lace, lingerie, and fabrics from the 1920s through 1950s for the collection. Aware of how “constrictive and unpleasant” the silhouettes often were for the likes of Marlene Dietrich and Doris Day, he sought to recontextualize everything for now. Enter: low-slung Bermuda shorts and straight-leg trousers to counteract sexy tops, disheveled nighties and not-so-ladylike pearls, and second-skin liquid silk gowns taped to the body.
Speaking of time, it’s possible that Cowan’s muse is becoming more grown up and buttoned up too (after eight years of showing collections, it’s easy to forget that he has only just entered his 30s.) There may have been suspender tights and garter belts down below, but fur-trimmed blazers and opera jackets with frog closures and funnel necks hinted at what an archetypical Uptown Girl would look like for this very Downtown designer. Arguably the sexiest outfit of the whole show—one that prompted plenty of phone cameras to rise—was the most unassuming: a black butterfly sleeve silk kaftan with a high neck and a tailbone-skimming curved low back.
Overt or subdued, the sultry Friday night crowd—including Julia Fox, Bebe Rexha, Jenna Lyons, and Honey Balenciaga—ate it up. “It sounds cheesy but my customers are my favorite people,” said Cowan. “They’re like-minded individuals who enjoy the fantasy that fashion can offer, and we all need that escapism.”
Summarizing it, the designer—who, like many others this week was wearing an ICE OUT pin on his polo shirt—said: “It’s probably our least campy collection. Not that I don’t love [camp]—but it just doesn’t feel quite suitable for the world we’re in right now.”
