Babes in Label Land (original) (raw)

https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/15/fashion/shows/15ROW.html

Feb. 15, 2007

A NORMAL Fashion Week produces one hot new label to seduce the big stores and the big editors. This season, there were three.

One of the newest darlings is Chris Benz, 24, who graduated from Parsons the New School for Design in 2004 and spent two years at J. Crew before starting his own line. Mr. Benz’s first collection, which he showed last week, may be the best example of the heightened level of sophistication that is expected of new designers today.

His playful point of view on youthful American sportswear, expressed in boxy mohair jackets with graphic resin bubble buttons and tomboy T-shirt dresses in superfine chiffon as bright as tangerine sorbet, is backed up with what stores would describe as the merch: easy scoop-neck cashmere sweaters in a mix of colors, lightweight T-shirts and sheared mink Army caps. Mr. Benz already has orders from five of the best boutiques in the country, including Linda Dresner in New York, Fred Segal in Los Angeles and Blake in Chicago.

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Debut Models in Chris Benzs mohair jackets during Fashion Week.Credit...Richard Termine for The New York Times

“One way or another, I feel like I have been working toward this since I was 7,” he said.

Katherine Tsina’s path to becoming a designer was more circuitous. She studied dance at Berkeley, then moved to New York to train with Merce Cunningham before eventually enrolling at Parsons. Now 26, Ms. Tsina designs a line called Avion Feminin, made up of melancholy black dresses in silk faille, shaped with subtle seams that look like spider webs. One dress had billowing lantern sleeves tied with ribbons at the elbow.

“I like the idea that you notice something about a coat or a dress right away,” she said. “But also, there are subtle things you might notice five minutes later.” Her collection will be carried at Satine in Los Angeles.

Ohne Titel is a line designed by Flora Gill and Alexa Adams, both 27 and also Parsons graduates. They worked together at Tommy Hilfiger on the company’s Karl Lagerfeld collection, but when that line was aborted last year, they started their company with a name that translates from German as “without title.”

They wanted the clothes to speak for themselves, and they do: sleek black jackets and skirts in techno fabrics, a lean pantsuit made of stretch silk, cashmere underpinnings and turtlenecks with ribbons of varying heft and texture.

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