When Marc Jacobs’s Spring 1993 collection for Perry Ellis hit the runway, it got him fired and the critics in an almighty lather. “Grunge,” pronounced Cathy Horyn, “is anathema to fashion.” “Grunge is ghastly,” averred Suzy Menkes. Similarly, both The New York Times and New York magazine descended into fits. It turns out that collection—reissued late last year—proved to be one of the most significant in New York Fashion Week’s history. One publication that spurned the winds of prevailing opinion to embrace Jacobs’s take on youthquake was Vogue: Its December 1992 spread by Grace Coddington and Steven Meisel ranks as both the first and the finest editorial encapsulation of Jacobs’s ’90s-defining eureka moment.
Today at Agnona, Simon Holloway paid full homage both to the editorial and the Jacobs-catalyzed injection of teen spirit into fashion of the time. “It was about when I left fashion school,” said the designer. “And I’ve been thinking about that landmark ‘Grunge & Glory’ shoot, and how it relates to a moment like now in terms of the continued casualization of fashion.”
This collection played between Agnona-flavored riffs on the source material of grunge and Agnona-flavored interpretations of the informal nature of fashion’s contemporary manifestation. Examples of the first included Look 35—four-figure Seattle thrift—that combined a hand-beaded silk georgette dress with Agnona archive floral print under a blue-on-white buffalo plaid coat. Or Look 13’s hand-tinted alpaca coat worn under a silk buffalo-print shirt, slouchy cashmere pants, and, ahem, health sandals. Or 18’s shearling plaid-clad car coat over more slouchy pants, this time in suede.
These cover versions were the launchpad for Holloway’s articulation of today’s shifting conventions with a few pieces to “elevate that and make it more tailored and hyper-luxe.” A beautiful suit in double-face gabardine with a leather lapel and that key slouchy pant with a soft break at the ankle was among the most lovely looks, yet least convincing as part of Holloway’s thesis. That’s because the real disruptor of fashion now is sports/streetwear. Looks 25 and 32 were cut in an Agnona woven textured tweed whose pattern reflected the work of Anni Albers, a mover in a far more venerable creative uprising. Philo meets Fila via Agnona: This was not a youthquake, but it was pretty great.
