Despite the smoke machine that filled the floor at the Starrett-Lehigh building with a thick layer of what looked like rolling clouds, and the voice of Enya on the soundtrack imploring us to “sail away,” designer Jackson Wiederhoeft was actually thinking about something banal. “Have you ever wandered down a really long hallway?,” they asked backstage after the show. “Have you ever been at a party and you say ‘I’m going to the bathroom,’ but then you just keep going past the bathroom a bit?” Cryptic, but relatable. Since it was impossible for guests to peek into 25 rooms inside a house, Wiederhoeft took the 25 characters that could presumably inhabit those rooms and placed them on the runway, where they walked slowly, salon-style, their full personalities on display.
It worked. There were classic Wiederhoeft silhouettes: a super-narrow pencil skirt and a corset in a blueish-gray Harris Tweed, the latter embellished with silver crystal beads; a “conservative” wedding dress with a fitted bodice and long sleeves, a little v-neck, fully hand-embroidered in glass beads; an oversized blouse and long column skirt in striped pink and black silk jacquard. But there were also some great casual pieces: baggy boxer-style shorts in yellow moiré embroidered with the words CUSTOM across the front, a groovy greenish tweed jacket with black piping details and NEW YORK embroidered across the back; an incredible pair of wide leg cargo trousers in baby llama wool. One of the best looks in the collection was also one of the most unorthodox, a hoodie covered in sparkly money signs, worn with wide leg trousers with all-over sequins in a vaguely tropical plant pattern, and topped off with a very formal pink velvet opera coat with a curved cutaway detail at the hip. “It’s something you wear to the bodega when you’re trying to feel yourself,” said Wiederhoeft. “The coat by itself is a very kind of ladylike piece, but I think it’s also kind of sample sale chic. It’s that kind of thing where the outfit is made up of everything you got from the sample sale, the charm of wearing all these things you could never buy unless some strange opportunity arose.” The lesson to be learned here is, should you get the opportunity to get your hands on some Wiederhoeft… seize it.
