At New York Fashion Week this February, the biggest story wasn’t any of the actual clothes (although Rachel Scott had a banger of a debut collection for Proenza Schouler. I was particularly impressed with Look 9). It was looksmaxxing freak Clavicular walking in MAGA provocateur Elena Velez‘s show, then getting his ass beat at an after party. The street fashion also underwhelmed. Looking at carousels created by The Cut, OOTD.com, and Nylon, I saw a lot of the same saminess: pops of red, oversized coats, and lots of Pantone’s dog whistling color of the year, Cloud Dancer.
It appears the real heat is at LAFW. No, not LA Fashion Week; that’s still a joke. Frieze Los Angeles week. Or L.A. Art Week, if you want to be more non-denominational. The fits being pulled off at galleries, open houses, and after parties are bringing a level of complexity and nuance to dressing that is just missing from the exclusively fashion-focused NYFW.
Here are descriptions of some looks I saw at Art Week openings: a put-together older lady in a Chico’s twinset and ginormous JNCO jeans. A man wearing sunglasses absolutely festooned with produce stickers (I will be stealing this upcycling idea for a clip-on tie I got). A woman in head-to-toe fuchsia denim. Another dressed like a Ming vase made of jeans. A fully rhinestoned Nudie suit. A lot of leopard print coats, a certain number of culottes, and one guy in the jacket from Drive. But there’s always a guy in the jacket from Drive. The point is, the clothes were unique. Some were obviously handmade. There were fascinating juxtapositions of pieces that interrogated notions of class and taste. Sure, there were tech bros in fleece vests, but there were also goths in bikinis sitting poolside at the Felix Art Fair. Having to plan a look that works as beach cover-up and gallery armor takes skill.
The thing about getting dressed up in LA is that it is surprisingly low stakes. You will never be the most under- or over-dressed person, wherever you go. No matter the event, there’s always someone in the lowest effort, beige athleisure set you’ve ever seen. There’s also someone attempting to gatecrash the Met Gala and/or wearing a look that doubles as conceptual art. And nobody cares! No one is looking at you. They are too busy looking at themselves.
L.A. self-obsession is always a double-edged sword. On the con side, people bail on plans more here than anywhere else on the planet. Transplants who come here to follow their dreams can justify any bad behavior in pursuit of those dreams. And therapy-speak: You’re not a flake, you’re “protecting your peace.” But this town is also very laissez-faire when people do actually show up to the function. Come to Zebulon, and someone is always testing the waters to see if they’re really a Hat Guy. And people will be there, gassing them up about their new, questionable hat. All attempts at style are supported, because we’re all fellow creatives trying shit out. But if you show up in what you slept in, that’s fine too. People are just impressed that you left the house at all.
New Yorkers monitor each other’s behavior. This can be a good thing when it comes to things like knowing how to use an escalator or board a subway train. But sometimes you need to dress like nobody’s watching. Or at least like the only eyes on you will be people vibrating at your exact same frequency. No one needs to pack a subway t-shirt if your itinerary is house to car to valet at the Santa Monica Airport.
But if it was just L.A.’s culture that inspired good street style, we’d have it year round. And we do not. The beige athleisure usually outweighs the leather midi skirts and Gail Weathers in Scream-type blazers. There’s something about Art Week that brings out the fashion plate in Angelenos.
At NYFW, people are attending fashion events, using fashion to convey fashionability. It is very on-message and thus, kind of dull. It is goal-oriented. It is the sartorial equivalent of bullet journaling. Fashion at fashion week? Groundbreaking. At L.A. Art Week, people are using fashion to convey that they have substance. They’re trying to show that they have interesting ideas, interesting aesthetics. An Eye. Where fashion at fashion week is layer-less, fashion at L.A. Art Week is the proverbial Shrek onion. They’re going to L.A. (a place that is allegedly shallow) and using fashion (an allegedly shallow practice) to convey depth. That’s interesting. That has that frisson of tension that elevates wearing clothes into an artform.
The frivolity of fashion can sometimes be a drag. There is, in fact, so much going on in the world. Have you heard? Aesthetic pursuits can feel hollow when your president is threatening to eradicate an entire civilization from the surface of the earth. Not to mention the ways the fashion industry exploits workers, valorizes thinness and whiteness, and generates literal tons of waste via fast fashion and ever-shortening trend cycles. The chasing of style can be so surface, and the industry of fashion can be so exploitative. Making clothes “about” something else is sometimes the only way to escape the Marie Antoinette allegations.
So how does one dress to convey depth? Not just depth, but the bohemian version of it that appreciates performance art. Here are a few trends I noticed this Art Week:
-Jeans pair with everything and lower you down to the working man’s lookbook. Are they $400 jeans? Shut up, they still count.
-The line between Adderall-fueled craft project and fashion objet d’art does not exist. Pick up a Bedazzler and get to work. Or a hole punch. Grommets are very in right now.
-The baseball cap is everything. You can pierce the brim like it’s Spring Break 1998. Or you can signal your L.A. bona fides with a clown hat from the Bob Baker Marionette Theater. At Felix, Feia was offering “Art Daddy” hats alongside sculptures by Charles Hickey. Both solid investments.
-When in doubt, Elaine Stritch it. Big button-down, no pants, drunk. It’s a classic for a reason.
