N.Y. Fashion Week: Brian Lichtenberg goes motocross grunge
NEW YORK - L.A.-based designer Brian Lichtenberg presented his fall and winter 2014 men’s and women’s collection in the sub-basement of the Hudson Hotel here Sunday night.
Inspiration: “There’s a little BMX, motocross, Southern California dirt bike [influence] in there - but there’s also some vintage clothing inspiration in there,” the designer told us, fresh off a Hilton sister photo op. “And then it was a matter of taking the parodies into white trash elements like Marlboro and Bud Light and Yamaha.”
The look: While the motocross inspiration did give Lichtenberg license to organically expand into the aforementioned parody territory (one standout example was a red-and-white sweatshirt emblazoned with “Lichtenboro” in a distinctly Marlboro-like typeface), there were other riffs on racing that included strong-shouldered black-and-yellow checkerboard dresses, contrast-taped knitwear skirts, sporty track pants and tube tops, crop tops and mixed fabrication tops with sheer panels. Long loose-knit scarves and other knitwear pieces evoked a kind of grunge-at-the-racetrack vibe.
Lichtenberg’s line includes menswear too, but the offerings consited mostly of sweatshirts, leather (or leather-like) jackets and track pants, sweatpants with a racing inspired black-and-white checkerboard side stripes or crammed with parody racing-related logos five deep on each leg from waistband to kneecap.
The scene: The dimly lit sub-basement of the Hudson Hotel, an official off-site venue of Mercedes-Benz New York Fashion Week at Lincoln Center, may have been one of the most celebrity-dense presentations of the week so far. Attendees included sisters Paris and Nicky Hilton, the former’s kind-of namesake blogger Perez Hilton, Joe Jonas, singer Jasmine V, model Jessica Perez and actress-model (and user-of-many-hyphens) Lydia Hearst-Shaw.
The verdict: This is Lichtenberg’s second New York Fashion Week presentation, and seeing his complete namesake line is a good reminder that he’s much more than a one-trick parody pony. And with recent reports that Miley Cyrus, the patron saint of White Trash, will be wearing his clothes in her upcoming Bangerz tour, we think his business is going to be off to the races.
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