N.Y. Fashion Week: Rich fabrics mark Duckie Brown’s women’s collection
NEW YORK – Designers Daniel Silver and Steven Cox sent their first full Duckie Brown women’s collection down the runway here Thursday, showcasing it alongside the fall and winter 2014 menswear offerings in the Meatpacking District studio space where the label has staged its New York Fashion Week shows for the past several seasons. And it was anything but the Duckie for dudes tweaked for women. “Duckie Brown has always been inspired by heavy English tailoring and a sort of lad culture -- and womenswear,” Silver said before the show. “And the womenswear is inspired by that. We’re not doing menswear for women – we’re doing womenswear for women.”
The inspiration: “We wanted to do something more evening-like than we’ve done before,” said Duckie’s Daniel Silver, “lots of rich silks and taffetas and lots of rich color.” He noted that the materials, mind-set and approach were the the same for the women’s and men’s collections. “We didn’t put on a different hat,” he said. “I don’t know how to be anyone but myself – and Steven is the same.”
The look: The fabrics may have whispered evening but the colors were summer afternoon -- bright pink, bold red and limoncello yellow mixed in with a more staid palette of navy blues, grays and browns. The men’s pieces were full of classic Duckie motifs – voluminous pant legs, layered tops, man skirts, bomber jackets and Jacquarded T-shirts as big as ponchos. The familiar wools and neoprene fabrications were there, taken up a rung on the luxe ladder thanks to silk trousers, jackets and tracksuit tops.
Those same elements could be seen in the women’s pieces too – the oversized T-shirts and generously cut wool trousers – but there also were sweat shirt dresses, silk T-shirt dresses, a midriff-baring silk T-shirt (shown by itself and in a second look where it was layered over a longer T-shirt, which helped illustrate the versatility of the piece.)
Of note: Standouts included a teal and orange tweed that was used throughout the collection including for men’s trousers and zip-front hoodies and women’s skirts and dresses, and a series of silk pieces with watercolor-like crowd scene designs that added, dare we say it, a touch of elegance to the overall collection.
The verdict: A solid and colorful inaugural voyage into the world of womenswear. If this is Duckie Brown’s take on evening, we can’t wait for the sun to start setting.
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