Caroline Hu inhabits a dreamscape that is distinctly her own. Speaking backstage before the show, the designer explained that her fall collection began not with some lofty literary or historical reference but with a simple towel—one that she has kept with her from infancy to adulthood and loved into softness and near-transparency.
From that simple, private starting point, the collection unfurled like a meditation on attachment, time and fragility: what we carry, what carries us. The mood, she explained, was “something like nostalgia”—an exaggerated portrait collar, loved to shreds (look 6); a short bridal gown-as-church with a little door and chapel faintly etched out with burgundy stitching on the hem.
Constructed like so many accumulations of memory, the looks featured hand-frayed cotton mesh, faux flowers coated in silicone and shrouded in tulle, or a dozen contrasting materials within a single garment, layered delicately into a lovely mille-feuille of a Peter Pan collar, for example. There were several iterations of tuck-strip techniques layered with woven tapes, pockets abounded, and the simplest materials–lace, cotton, silk–came together in elaborate collages that nodded to states of 18th-century French undress without getting literal. Experiments in volume found suiting turned inside out and upside down to become a swaying, multi-layered skirt.
It’s a fair bet that few designers out there would consider Crocs in a romantic light, but Hú pulled it off, softening the clunkiness of the Bae Clog with custom-knitted uppers and silk ribbon flowers.
To bring the clothes to life, in lieu of models Hu enlisted dancers who seemed to move through the collection, led by actor-dancer-choreographer Emma Porter and movement artist Matt McCreary. Their emotionally charged performance transformed this runway outing into something more like theater.
