Ahead of New York Fashion Week, Jackson Wiederhoeft was scouting Upper East Side townhouses for an 80-seat ballroom-style show before the option arose to show at IMG's NYFW hub, the Starrett Building -Lehigh. He couldn't pass it up, but the salon was certainly here to stay, in abstract manners.
Wiederhoeft, like his former boss Thom Browne, is not one for a simple back-and-forth parade. In lieu of a performance, Wiederhoeft once again turned to movement director Austin Goodwin to work with each model (whom Wiederhoeft now considers like family) to express the meanings of each of their looks on the mist-covered runway. “That salon feeling of 'This look has been developed for this person,'” he said.
The ethos links directly to her collection titled “Secret Room,” which fuses couture techniques, fantasy, sass and wearability into demi-couture, ready-to-wear and bridal fashion. The collection played with the idea of many personalities and style choices, but was elevated and cohesive throughout.
“Obviously fantasy is amazing. “A lot of these styles are very fantastical, but they are very based on those intimate experiences that I have with clients in the fitting room, which is where people are so vulnerable and you get to the bottom of their desires,” he said backstage.
The “Secret Room” is actually the mirrorless fitting room inside her showroom, and is where Wiederhoeft has one-on-one appointments with brides and private clients almost daily. The designer said the most common experiences are customers' surprising reactions after seeing themselves in a corset (his signature and central line of each collection) for the first time.
“It feels like we opened this door for people to see another version of themselves. Not someone else, but an even older version of who they already are. For me, that is key,” she said. In that sense, there were split personality (or sister) looks throughout the fall, as in look eight with double-faced silk satin corset with draped black tulle overlay and black double-faced satin bow, black shorts satin with crepe back and miniskirt with bow and tulle. tutu with double-layer trompe-l'oeil stripper “Remember Me” look nine T-shirt, hand-embroidered tulle mini slip dress and fun accessories.
Wiederhoeft said she didn't feel like anything was “totally new” in the fall, which she loved. Rather, an evolution of emblematic ideas or those that he remembered to interpret in the present, such as crochet, which first appeared 13 collections ago. For fall, she worked with the same designer to make the hand-crochet cardigan and celadon green pencil skirt (with silk ribbon and gold tinsel). Additionally, corsetry evolved beyond signature tops and megawatt embroidered dresses into stellar moiré-belted jackets, coats, and shirts.
Honestly, there were too many good clothes to list, but what a good problem to have.
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