"I'm an East Village kid at heart." That's also how Prabal Gurung considers the ICB girl. She's a lot city. She's a little bit street. And she's very determined to make it in Manhattan.
Gurung, too, is determined. He wants ICB to be a thing—a collection with a very specific DNA that rarely lines up perfectly with his namesake line. ICB is a big business in Asia, and Gurung wants it to be one here, too.
The contemporary market is crowded, to say the least, and Gurung has made ICB stand apart by offering consistently sharp, graphic little pieces that aren't too trendy or referential. This season there was a white-eyelet collared shirt, trimmed in black cotton, with black and white stripes inset on the body of the shirt. The mash-up made sense because the eyelet was more geometric than floral. A strappy, form-fitting black dress was amped up with a squared-off neckline and olive-colored insets. And a little leather crop top looked nonchalant with a pair of billowy silk trousers. It's all stuff that ambitious girls in the East Village would and should wear. "My goal is for [the collection] to have an identity of its own," Gurung reiterates season after season. They say that a dream can become reality if you believe in it just enough. Gurung has indeed made ICB real. Hopefully that East Village girl will latch on, too.
