A lunchtime fashion show at the peak of the holiday season in the Times Square Planet Hollywood? Only an out-of-towner could’ve dreamed up the plan—so bad it’s good.
The French designer Christelle Kocher has made a project of putting on shows in the people’s Paris: Les Halles, the Folies Bergère, a gay-friendly Catholic church. Last year in New York she staged her Pre-Fall collection at the Strand amidst its “18 miles of books.” Public places jibe with her haute streetwear aesthetic and high/low sensibility. But Planet Hollywood, an early ’90s investment vehicle for the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone, and Bruce Willis, has a pretty high cheese factor—and we didn’t even get a plate of french fries. It’s a testament to the charm and inventiveness of Kocher’s clothes that she pulled it off.
If the venue wasn’t a giveaway, the concept was Hollywood, and more loosely America in general, which Kocher looks at with stars in her eyes. Here and there, a piece got lost in translation. In the wake of Gucci’s MLB collaboration, the logoed baseball jerseys seemed a bit over and done. She had better luck with new versions of her spliced and diced rugby shirts and dresses, which have spawned a copycat trend across the industry. A trench with shoulders and sleeves patch-worked from a tracksuit similarly showcased her inventive patternmaking.
When Kocher is good, she’s really good, and she has a natural hand for Hollywood signifiers like sequins and feathers, the latter of which she specializes in at Maison Lemarié, the feather supplier to Chanel. (Lemarié’s workmanship was on display at the house’s Métiers d’Art show at the Met last week.) The designer cited Marilyn Monroe as a reference, but it’s new Hollywood that she’ll be speaking to with this collection: the Hadid sisters and Kendall Jenner, young women who’ve mastered the art of getting dressed up—like, really dressed up. After all, there’s never not cameras. They’re bound to relate to the lingerie details and the boas here, the pool-blues and “happy pinks,” the corseted jeans and tattoo knits. These are clothes for style extroverts. Kocher herself likes to work a pantsuit, and she came out for her bow wearing a terrific one in hot-pink crushed velvet, with a Planet Hollywood logo tee underneath. The iridescent sequin tuxedo, shown separately on the runway, had a persuasive swagger, too.
