Tara Subkoff is a new woman. In an about-face from her retro-inspired spring collection, which celebrated the glamour of Old Hollywood, the designer presented a vintage-free fall knitwear collection to an artist-heavy crowd packed into the small 94th Street salon of independent curator Jeanne Greenberg Rohatyn. A decent portion of the audience had actually had a hand in the production: Paula Hayes’s Forest installation formed the backdrop, while Rita Ackermann helped paint the meandering paper runway, strewn with white roses and magnolia leaves. Also in attendance were Jimmy Fallon, Sam Taylor-Wood, and a gaggle of under-fives that included Mingus Reedus, whose saucer-sized blue eyes followed his mom, Helena Christensen, as she walked.
Subkoff’s theme was a kind of extreme take on the strong woman: half goddess (but not of the drapey sort), half Amazon. That translated into microscopically short, body-loving knits, mostly rendered in black, white, and metallics, accessorized with Erickson Beamon cuff bracelets and knee-high gold Puma boots. This was a tightly focused show that marked a departure from Imitation of Christ’s established brand image. Though reworked vintage will continue to be available by special order, Subkoff, for now, seems focused on her own original designs. This takes her out of an increasingly crowded niche, but how well she can fare in a bigger, more competitive arena remains to be seen.
