Whether you use the word soccer or football generally depends on which side of the Atlantic you’re playing on, though die-hard fans of the sport everywhere tend to call it the Beautiful Game, thanks to legendary Brazilian striker Pelé, who popularized the phrase back in the ’70s. The oft-used synonym wasn’t lost on Rio Uribe, who conceived of his new Gypsy Sport collection with a soccer jersey and a piece of West African indigo fabric sourced at a Paris flea market in his mind’s eye—and a whole lot of flair at his fingertips.
That Uribe has come a long way since he started his label goes without saying—it’s been less than two years since the California-born designer staged a guerrilla-style Spring 2015 debut in Washington Square Park, and in that short space of time he’s realized a world for his brand in full living color, a place where traditional notions of masculine and feminine are turned upside down and inside out. He brought the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund prize home with him last fall, and his latest collection showed a new sense of confidence and maturity.
Fringed with tassels or trimmed with lace, the iterations of the soccer, football, and basketball jersey were seemingly endless in the show, each more dazzling than the next, some fashioned as asymmetric flapper dresses and others as figure-hugging muscle tees. Uribe chose an all-male cast for his last menswear collection, but this season the lineup reflected his gender-fluid approach to design and the mood in fashion overall: At a time when the boundaries between seasons themselves are falling apart, the idea of drawing hard and fast lines along gender hardly feels modern.
The crowd of cool kids that showed up to the presentation alongside buyers and editors yesterday didn’t seem to be taking sides on that count either. In fact, their pell-mell styling of baggy basketball shorts, T-shirt dresses, slips, and second-skin leggings spoke to the opposites-attract fashion on the runway itself, where tender and tough happily coexisted in the same outfit.
Pull those expertly layered looks apart, though, and there were pieces here that style-conscious girls and boys outside of downtown Manhattan will understand, be they cropped workwear trousers, elongated button-downs printed with a map of the world, or even track pants edged with broderie anglaise. As a CVFF alum, Uribe earned himself a mentorship with 3.1 Phillip Lim CEO Wen Zhou, and it’s apparent that he has gained valuable merchandising acumen under her tutelage. Much like soccer, fashion is ultimately about winning on a global scale, and Uribe is clearly thinking along those lines. His new collection makes that endgame more tangible than ever.
