Escada celebrates 40 years in New York

Escada celebrated its 40th anniversary
Sunday by making a New York Fashion Week debut with soft power dressing for
the working woman — an upbeat and colorful collection that paid tribute to
the 1980s.

Models strode down a serpentine grass runway for the Munich-based
luxury
brand’s first runway show since 2015 and the second full collection of
young
Irish designer Niall Sloan, who joined Escada last year and who earlier in
his
career spent a decade at Burberry.

There were power suits with big gold buttons and gold chain belts, in
bright colors with boxy jackets cut loose and comfortable, paired with
tennis
shoes that evoked joyfulness and ease of movement.

Sloan explained that the concept was “very, very soft power dressing”
for
the modern working woman. If shoulder pads were the 1980s way of muscling
into
a man’s world, in the 2010s it’s about being effortless.
“You’re still the mother, the carer, the sister, the diplomat, the
person
who holds things together,” he told AFP.

“I want you to put something in the morning and feel effortless and
go
throughout the day and kind of not think about it anymore because you have
enough to do.”

Escada has a strong working women’s identity. It was founded in 1978
by
Margaretha Ley and her husband, and is today owned by Megha Mittal, who
acquired the brand in 2009 after it filed for bankruptcy.

Lightness counters difficult times

Escada’s spring/summer 2019 was a riot of bright color from yellow
jackets
to fuscia skirts, oversized silk shirts to red, orange and colorful jackets
covered in colorful ESCADA letters.

There were black dresses covered in bright florals, and contrast in
the
form of beige and cream, with plenty of stripes and dots — an homage to
Julia
Roberts in “Pretty Woman” with a reinvention of the brown dress with white
polka dots she wore to the races in the movie.

Equestrian prints and jockey motifs harked back to the brand’s
origins. The
name Escada came from a racehorse that Margaretha and Wolfgang Ley spotted
at
a racetrack.

As befits the best of any anniversary, it looked back as well as
forward.
Sloan said Ley was a constant inspiration and that her collections were
“always done with a touch of lightness.”

“Especially today, when things are heavy and dark and difficult and
we
don’t know the way through, it’s good to deal with that with a light
touch,”
he said. “I think it’s a very female strength.”

Mother of all models

Three of the models in a show by critics’ favorite Sander Lak were
older
than customary, and one of them was his mother. Otherwise, there were
bright
colors and white, crinkled paper and plastic materials.

“To have a moment when I can celebrate what I am doing, with the
people I
love is really great,” said Dutch creative director Lak, who created his
label
Sies Marjan in New York in 2016.

“It’s all these different people in my life — my mom was in it, my
childhood friends, my new friends,” he said.

California Dreamin’

German house Hugo Boss, which parted ways with New York designer
Jason Wu
last season, summed up its collection as “California Breeze,” but if so, it
was a Teutonic interpretation of life in the Golden State.

There were soft blush suits for men, surfboard-style stripes running
down
the sides of pants and draw-string waists. Architectural-style prints on
smart
work dresses for women were another key look, as were wide-brimmed intrepid
hats with accents in maroon, black and blue.
When it came to footwear, it was ankle-high gladiators for women, but
for
men, Hugo Boss decided to bring back socks and sandals.(AFP)

photos: courtesty of the brand