Kiko Kostadinov referenced two films when going over his Fall collection: Midnight Lace (the thriller from 1960) and The Ring (the horror movie out of Japan circa 1998). Yet when the clothes were seen in motion—and softly padded by an ominous, what-might-lurk-in-the-woods soundtrack, along with show notes that spoke of monsters, one couldn’t help but think of Netflix’s Bird Box (the meme-factory movie of 2018). This was mainly felt in instances where stringy wigs covered the models’ faces, along with pseudo-blindfolds rendered in rhinestones.
What that’s all meant to imply: Kostadinov is pretty good at giving a salable touch to darker themes, and here he even imbued a whisper of camp into what was arguably his most commercial collection to date. “It’s much bigger this time,” he said. “And it’s really focused more on the outerwear.” Kostadinov recently departed the British heritage label Mackintosh, where he learned the complexities of the genre. The best pieces were at the start: big, arc-shouldered jackets that were worn large over skinny, pant-less legs. “It’s a ladylike, ’50s-era silhouette,” said the designer.
Swing coats, inverse-butterfly bomber jackets, and trenches rounded out the winterwear; there were also notable ponchos and capes, one in eggplant-purple, and “kind of baseball-style” gloves mixed in courtesy of an ongoing collaboration with Asics. And while the hair and jewels-over-the-eyes made for a filmic visual, the garments themselves registered, mostly, as fundamental—even if in a broodily glamorous manner.
