NEW YORK (AP) – The Associated Press is all over New York Fashion Week, from the runway designs to the celebrity-filled front rows. Here are some recent highlights:
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MURDER MOST FOUL, AT ADAM SELMAN
Sitting atop the seats at Adam Selman’s runway show were tiny little envelopes emblazoned with police “evidence” tape. Inside were telltale shards of bloodstained glass – actually, it was hard candy – all in the name of Selman’s playfully ghoulish theme: Murder.
Selman said backstage that he wanted to go a little darker this season – both in color and spirit – and focus on the nighttime, not the day. He also was inspired by the recent Netflix documentary series, “Making a Murderer.”
“I am obsessed with ‘true crime,'” Selman said. “So, in a way, I’m just sort of saying it’s a murder in the night, with like a true crime-inspired sensationalism of murder and how we as a society hype up the idea of murder, but still in a weird Adam Selman playful way, if that makes sense.”
The soundtrack for the Thursday evening show, by Michel Gaubert, embodied the eerie theme. It started out with a young female voice saying, “I like to go to parties. I like how people are looking at me. I like the music. I like the lights.” As the show progressed, with the models strutting in various garments of black and red – most notably some sexy slip dresses – the music grew more ominous. The voice came back saying the same thing, only one wondered now what would become of this poor soul.
Selman, best known for his work with Rihanna, said he wanted to convey a bit of playfulness along with the darker tone.
“It’s not totally dark,” he said. “There’s lots of lame and there’s lots of shine. I have big splashes of red, which obviously you can assume what that means. But colors weren’t speaking to me this season and I’ve never done a lot of black, so I really wanted to hone in and do some black and then to layer in with shine and red, just pops of red, and go from there.”
Why tell a whole story with one’s clothes, rather than just showing them? Selman says it’s fun, but it also helps him focus.
“It helps me formulate a collection,” he said. “It really helps me have fun with it.”
Selman’s show wasn’t always going to be in the evening. He acknowledged that he’d changed it because he didn’t want to overlap with the afternoon show of a fairly, er, high-profile designer: Kanye West.
“I just didn’t want to conflict,” he said of West’s much-anticipated Madison Square Garden show. “I didn’t know what would be in store.”
Attending both shows was singer Charli XCX, who said the Kanye show had been “great – for me it was really cool to hear (his) album in such a huge space.”
But back to Selman: “I think he’s making extremely important marks in fashion and in the fashion world,” the singer said. Of her Selman designed skirt, she added: “It makes me feel free and it makes me feel like a fairy and a ballerina, but kind of badass, too.”
-Nicole Evatt and Jocelyn Noveck