The New Yorker Festival: The Next Generation of Fashion

From left to right: Louise Markey (of LF Markey) from Sydney/London, Makoto Takada from Nagasaki/New York, and Joeri Van Yper from Antwerp

Excellent chat this afternoon featuring three young designers from cities that represent the best in avant garde fashion. The designers each brought three looks from recent collections to represent their style, and spoke about the inspirations and aspirations (and perspirations!) that drive them everyday.

Everyone agreed that Alber Elbaz is a genius in general, and even more so with ribbon. The collective subconscience of inspiration was touched on, always a mystery to me. For example how does everyone decide to do lace one season? Paging Malcolm Gladwell.

Each of the designers was very interesting, but I was most struck by Mako's story and style. He planned to get into media, but was drawn to design. So, he now combines the two by choosing movies as his inspiration. The pieces he showed were inspired by Atonement and City Lights, an interesting combo of irreverent humor and sadness. I love how he made lace, a somber and wilted fabric, into a sculpture by fusing it with plastic in what has to be the greatest raincoat ever (below left). Also interesting was a dress by LF Markey which had a single zipper that was exposed above the waistline but hidden below (not easy!). Joeri's shoes made from snowboard parts were brilliant.

Suggestion for next year's fashion panel: I would love to see a trend discussion with Malcolm, someone from Youth Intelligence, and an influential designer...let's say Marc Jacobs.