From left to right: Max Osterweis, Joseph Altuzarra, Alexa Adams, Sophie Theallet, Patrik Ervell, Wayne Lee.
What is most exciting about what is happening in fashion now, is that it is not just six names who are making waves in New York, but an entire generation of designers who have the potential to transform what we think of as American fashion. The majority of designers showing during New York Fashion Week, which begins today, started their labels within the last decade, chasing the dream of fashion in a city that has not always been so hospitable to talented designers. In fact, very few who started here since the 1980s managed to survive.
Yet there are more new designers working in New York fashion than at any point in its history, a rush of tenderfeet that one can say with some certainty began in 2002, when Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, two students at Parsons the New School for Design, sold their senior collection to Barneys New York and became the toast of the industry with their label, Proenza Schouler. Their example changed the way young designers looked at their careers. They no longer had to apprentice for years or scream to be heard — New York was crazy for the new.
