The Strand’s third-floor Rare Book Room was the setting for the Koché Pre-Fall show. Designer Christelle Kocher is French, one of a rising class of Paris talents, and she has her eye on the American market. The Strand is a place she makes a point of visiting on every trip to New York, so it was a fitting spot for her stateside runway debut, imbued with meaning not only because she’s a reader (currently it’s Russell Banks’s The Darling), but also because back home in Paris, she presents in similar public spaces—cultural crossroads like Les Halles or L’eglise Saint-Merry. “I’m sharing my Paris with other people,” she has said. Kocher also liked the fact that the Strand has never been used for a fashion show before.
Befitting the non-elitist venues she chooses, Kocher’s design sensibility is informed by the uniform of the street, with a signature point of difference. She has couture training and is fond of embellishing her oversize parkas and shrunken tank tops with Maison Lemarié feathers and Lesage beads. Those couture accents aside, Kocher’s aesthetic comes across as quite American; it’s certainly New York–ish. With its Statue of Liberty collages, bold-faced logos, and nameplate necklaces, this collection felt utterly at home at the Strand: vital, youthful, and joyfully but not entirely gender neutral. Though there was a far larger proportion of male models than in previous Koché collections (all street cast, like the women), there was a sense of easy interchangeability. Kocher is just as likely to put a hooded jacket smothered in multicolor feathers on a dude as she is to dress a chick in a shell suit.
On the runway in Spring, Kocher launched a collaboration with Paris Saint-Germain, her neighborhood football team. The patchworked jersey dresses were the stars of that show—sophisticated in construction and stop-you-in-your-tracks bold—and she expanded on them here in subtler colorways. Otherwise, what struck you about this collection was its vibrancy: an electric print that evoked Times Square and dance floors, a slinky catsuit in red-and-black leopard spot, an acid yellow coat worn over a fluoro green suit.
There have been significant defections on the part of young New York designers for Paris Fashion Week in 2017. This city swap is likely to be seasonal at best, but we’ll take it. All of us could use a hit of the energy zipping around Macron’s Paris right now. For Kocher’s finale, the models emerged carrying books, one of the tallest proudly displaying a copy of Attack of the 50 Ft. Women against the bodice of her bordeaux-color jersey dress. Speaking afterward, Kocher explained that she sees humor as a distinctly American fashion characteristic. Locals might debate her on that one, but this show was a delight, no argument.
