If Johnny Talbot and Adrian Runhof went to town with a riff on the seventies, thank Christopher Pesto: His hilarious, iconic student protest over the unpardonable sin of a corduroy skirt sparked the duo s desire to turn the ultimate no-no into, as Talbot put it, "hopefully, a fashion yes-yes." But while Talbot Runhof s highly textured and embellished Fall collection aimed, in a roundabout way, to make a broader stand for inclusion—no discrimination, even for fabrics!—it was emphatically not about your mother s (or grandmother s) corduroy.
Instead, there was a catsuit in deep-blue baby cord printed with a hippie orange necktie pattern; a full, floor-length skirt in wide cord cut on the bias; and cord mimicked in silvery blue Lurex or jacquard. The material was also used on a sleeveless tweed crop top layered over lace, and reprised in bugle beads on a "sofa tweed" party dress. Occasionally, the designers took a little breather to focus on original fabric development, most compellingly on full jacquard ball skirts such as the one in a picture-frame mosaic of purple, orange, and red.
