I’m told that as you age, gravity does its job and things once pert begin to melt downward toward the ground. Luckily, this has not happened to the derriere of Duckie Brown’s Steven Cox—his bum, pert as ever, makes an encore appearance in his spring 2022 collection’s look book, clothed in tiny tap shorts inspired by a pair his trainer once gifted him. (Kudos to the trainer.)
But after 20 years doing Duckie, Cox and his partner, Daniel Silver, have let gravity work in other ways. This season they have taken all their hems and dropped them to the floor, turning button-down silk shirts and nylon taffeta tote bags into soigné gowns and body-size bags. The effect is rhapsodic; Cox models the slate shirtdresses and front-to-back flannel shirts with the casual, in media res candor of a stage actor. A jersey raglan sweatshirt in a muddy taupe hangs extra long like an uncanny cross between a nightshirt and a red carpet gown. A scrunch-waist taffeta skirt is cut like a gigantic rectangle; tiny miniskirt aprons in chiffon and wool counter the strict, serious forms of classic tailored coats and puddling-hem trousers. The collection is at once exuberant in its monolithic silhouettes and monastic; you would need a big personality (and possibly a great ass) to pull these clothes off.
Cox and Silver have both, of course, and one imagines their clients do too. Since stepping away from the wholesale system and launching Duckie Brown as a direct-to-customer enterprise—and I mean direct; clients must visit or FaceTime in to their West Village studio to shop—the pair have been able to connect more intimately with the psychology of their shoppers. As they go through their rails, they know exactly who might want what, in what color, and for what occasion. This is why, season to season, the Duckies don’t have to change too much. For this 20th anniversary show of force, they’ve repurposed many of their great ideas and fabrics from the past, modernizing them into genderless, sensual tunics and skirts. More of their 20-year strokes of genius will be collected in a book, out soon; one can only hope it’s accompanied by a party full of fans decked out in Duckie, celebrating two of New York’s great masters of cut, color, and (I’d venture) calisthenics.
