Fashion editors who may have initially bristled at the location listed on the invitation for Thakoon’s Fall show (Empire Stores, a newish waterfront development in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood) needn’t have worried: The view was worth it. With a backdrop of the East River and the Manhattan skyline at around sunset, Thakoon Panichgul sent out a collection—his first with new business partners since taking last season off—rooted in what he said was an appreciation for the French artist Jean Dubuffet’s nontraditional standards of beauty, and what he called the “raw glamour” of Peter Lindbergh’s 1990s fashion editorials for Vogue. (Timely, considering Lindbergh’s upcoming Kunsthal Rotterdam exhibition.) This translated into some understated chantilly lace eveningwear, darkly romantic butterfly-print dresses, and a lot of layering of traditional fall staples—occasionally to an almost absurdist level, in the manner of someone attempting to duck an airline baggage allowance by wearing all of their outerwear at once.
The show’s physical invitation—a Walkman and cassette tape—may have been a nod to what in the tech world might as well be ancient history, but everything Panichgul is doing from a business perspective is decidedly devoted to the future; right down to the booklets that the brand distributed with scannable codes to enable special content, behind the scenes footage, and product information. In addition to new investors, the designer has a show-now-buy-now model not unlike what Tom Ford and Tommy Hilfiger are launching. The somewhat grungy, 1990s vibes of the collection were perhaps unexpected from a designer best loved for sweet cocktail shifts, but there’s nothing like sales to show which way the wind is blowing: Many of the 31 runway looks are already available for purchase.
