The Super Bowl could wait.
Sunday night, CFDA Women’s Wear Designer of the Year Award winner Cate Holstein asserted her rising status in the industry with an intimate showing of her fall Khaite collection in her first retail store, which is opening later this week in SoHo.
“When the space started coming together, it was the perfect environment, I would have wanted to recreate it on set,” she said of staging the 100-person show chez Khaite, where the store’s Bucida buceras tree, nicknamed “Shady Lady,” became a photo backdrop for guests who included Charlotte Lawrence, Karlie Kloss, Alexa Chung, Chloe Fineman and more.
The store design, which WWD exclusively previewed last week, was an act of love between Holstein and her architect husband Griffin Frazen, who are expecting their first child, Calder James Frazen, on March 10.
The cavernous, concrete 4,000-square-foot industrial-meets-natural store pays homage to SoHo’s history as an industrial and artistic neighborhood. The space is defined by curving, abstract steel dividers à la Richard Serra, a leader in the area’s 1960s minimalist art movement alongside Donald Judd, Carl Andre and others.
“They started their careers with a lot of found objects on the street, so that was where we brought in concrete and steel. There’s also this aspect of salt-of-the-earth American industrial materials that we feel are very true to the brand as well. I don’t shy away from being an American brand,” Holstein said.
All of it made its way into this more directional collection, itself a balance of masculine and feminine, precision and plushness, raw materials and romance, marking a more mature phase for the growing brand, which has crossed the $100 million revenue mark.
Holstein has often shown affection for the gritty side of New York, but this season, her woman might think twice about staying out all night at the club. She’s grown up, has board meetings, museum galas and film premieres to go to, perhaps — and to dress for.
Leather jackets and outerwear (including the perennially wait-listed $12,000 Ada shearling coats) have always been a Khaite mainstay, but this season she offered more, more, more, with masculine, linebacker-shoulder coats in glossy glove leather or camel hair shaped by vertical seaming, darts and internal structures accentuating the feminine waist. Every woman will want a power coat come fall, and there were lots here to covet.
Shearling is also emerging as a trend here this week, and Holstein’s were shearlings on steroids — teddy pants (in bright green worn low and belted with a sheer black sweater!), shearling bombers, shearling and leather camisoles and shearling and leather slipdresses suspended from delicate spaghetti straps giving new meaning to cozy chic.
Leather dressing continues to be important for the brand, but this season was more refined, with bright white leather looking particularly fresh and cool, as on an A-line leather skirt worn with a sexy, gray sweater cutout over the shoulders and flat black boots. Also on the knitwear front, an oversized fisherman rib sweater dress was yummy.
Holstein picked up on fashion’s new minimalism moment with ivory or black silk tunics worn with fluid trousers as an elegant suit, and almost monastic long-sleeved maxi dresses with vertical pleats revealing chiffon layers underneath. Meanwhile, the nail heads on a sensual deep-V front black slipdress, and gold snaps on fluid trousers nodded to the store’s use of industrial materials.
The collection went big on grand gestures, and Holstein said these more special runway pieces, which may previously not have made it to retail, will have a life in her store, alongside the wearable jeans, knits and boots that have powered her business growth.
Upping the ante on a runway collection is one more step in building a lasting luxury brand. Touchdown.
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