Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez have a new monogram. It’s an abstracted PS that looks more like an infinity symbol than letters. The designers are offering a rendering of it that they did with black acrylic on paper in an online auction Phillips is currently running. The estimate is $10,000-$15,000—steep compared to the Ellsworth Kelly right next to it with a current bid of $1,600.
At today’s show, which took place at Phillips’s Park Avenue headquarters, they made subtle use of the monogram. It decorated the chest of a little cashmere sweater and took the form of brass hardware on black loafers. There were more monograms stenciled on the sidewalk in the neighbourhood around the auction house than there were on the actual runway.
You could say that McCollough and Hernandez are in their subtle era. At a preview in their showroom, they reiterated points they’ve made recently, about rejecting the quest for seasonal newness in favour of honing their signatures—iterating rather than flipping the script. “We finished the fall show and we knew right away that we really wanted to continue its spirit,” McCollough said. “To have that board of women we pulled together last season be the starting point and just kind of riff off a lot of the same ideas in a spring context.”
The two collections were very much in conversation with each other. It started with the celebrity casting. Chloë Sevigny, who opened last season, was replaced by Natalie Laura Mering, who is known professionally as Weyes Blood, and who wrote an original composition for the soundtrack. Her white single-breasted three-button jacket and black trousers struck an understated, minimal note, save for her glossy red toe polish and sheer black stockings worn with strappy kitten heels. Other jackets were worn tucked into pants waistbands, a utility belt strung through the belt loops.
McCollough and Hernandez liked the ordinariness of showing bleached straight-leg jeans and a black leather coat with straps hanging below the hem (an equestrian reference), or a papery windbreaker-type jacket with a mesh tee. Pieces like these made this collection look more Helmut Lang-y than Peter Do’s debut for that brand yesterday. But they answered those plainer looks with special pieces that show off their interest in craft, like mesh dresses made from hand-tacked ribbon and gossamer separates with “broken glass” embroidery. Speaking of the brand’s initials, their first handbag, the PS1, is back in squishy leather and leather-covered hardware. Its low-key cool jibes with the rest of the collection.
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