Area, Ludovico de Saint Sernin

Sunday's New York Fashion Week revolved around two independent designers, Piotrek Panszczyk of Area and Ludovic of St Sernin, a Frenchman who declares his love for the liberating air of the Big Apple, in connection with the heritage of Robert Mapplethorpe.

Scope: From the Amazon to surrealism

Area is a New York haute couture brand that – surprise, surprise – has found a home in Amazon's Luxury Stores, the main sponsor of its latest show.

Presented Sunday afternoon on the top floor of a gigantic red brick building on the Hudson River, Area's fashion is decidedly couture given its rabid experimentation, bizarre fabrics and outrageous cuts.

The good thing about the brand is that its founder and creative director, Piotrek Panszczyk, has developed a highly identifiable signature style.

This season, Piotrek referred to a central leitmotif: the eye. Playing with cartoon images with drooping corneas and oversized pupils; or surreal assemblages that would have amused Man Ray.

All incorporated into tentacle-shaped blouses, statement bras and seaweed-style cocktails, all in black and white.
Before wearing the earrings in the eyelets that combine technical lace and leather. It all leads to fantastic Dalmatian-print dresses, capes and ruffled cocktails with black buttons.

Although mixed in with the drama were a series of slim columns, sleek T-shirts, taut micro boleros and blue denim jeans and shorts, finished with Area's signature belts and crystal beads.

“New perspectives: seen being seen. We have been in business for 10 years and Crystal was a pivotal moment in our growth. But I also think I wanted to show people that Area is about many other things: silhouette, ingenuity and developing new fabrics,” he insisted.

All anchored by another great partnership, Carnaby Street-style platforms with cartoon petals, courtesy of Italian master shoemaker Giuseppe Zanotti, who sat front row on the 18th floor of the Starrett Lehigh Building.

“Showing that we can be light and airy. But it was also about saying that we can do more than a super complicated couture dress. “Sometimes just wearing a thing evokes so much desirability,” she added.

Thanks to the connection with Amazon, the collection will be available online, potentially taking Area from a cult Big Apple brand to a global brand.

Ludovic de Saint Sernin: Mapplethorpe mode

This season at St Sernin's Ludovic focused squarely on the art and photography of Robert Mapplethorpe.

See catwalk

Mapplethorpe, husband of Patti Smith, was one of the greatest photographers, known for the way he could suggest human attributes in the flowers and vegetables he photographed. And whose photographic diary of creatives and beauties in New York four decades ago revolutionized photography and ideas about sexual freedom.

In this collection, Ludovic was completely in tune with that worldview. De Saint Sernin partnered with the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to incorporate images of his flowers and fauna into technical organza tops and sexy semi-sheer cocktails.

She combined the airy and suggestive blouses with pants and pencil skirts. Several of her models wore bras and pants topped with sheer skirts with tulip overlays. They were all electrifyingly sexy.

Like Robert, Ludovic likes to venture into the dark side and caps off his show with black leather bondage looks for men. The kind that would earn him a round of applause if he wore it inside leather bars like Ramrod's in the West Village.

It is very likely that Mapplethorpe would have approved.