The best shows this fashion month were designed for women
It started over a month ago, on day two of New York Fashion Week when Veronica Leoni had her debut show for Calvin Klein and sent a collection of bonded silks and fine wool tailoring down the runway. The show was criticised at the time for being too faithful to the Calvin of the 1990s. Leoni - who had stints at The Row, Céline and Jil Sander - had played it too safe, made clothes that were too expensive and failed to move the brand forward.
But when I looked through the images of the runway - which was staged in the garment district headquarters, on the ground-floor gallery space at 205 West 39th Street where the company has been based for three decades - I felt a rare desire that underpins the best design. These were clothes I immediately wanted to touch and try on and wear.
The coats were dramatic but properly tailored – eschewing the oversized proportions so common now in outerwear. One ankle-length, single breasted grey coat slouched so perfectly off-the shoulder and tucked in so expertly beneath the bust I barely noticed it was being modelled by Kendall Jenner. The tailored suits had narrow, but slouchy pants legs that buckled on top of sharp leather brogues. The lines of the jackets were clean but exaggerated and paired with delicately, fluid pencil skirts. Not everything was perfect, but it made me breathe a sigh of relief that another woman was designing clothes for a legacy, luxury brand.
Of course, the next show that excited me was a few weeks later in Milan when Miuccia and Raf sent dishevelled models down the runway for Prada. Much has been written about the richness of her internal life – I would love to spend a week following the two of them around. Listening to them debate what about femininity is and is not banal in 2025. How does one create for a woman in this era? How does she want to feel in her clothes – when masculinity is in such a crisis it appears to have started WWIII? Apparently, (according to The Washington Post) backstage Raf told reporters, “We question it… What does femininity mean? What does it mean in the past? Today? What does it mean in the future?”
The clothes managed to be somehow pretty in essence but masculine in form. A knee length, sleeveless dress in a shade of dusky pink with a bow in the middle of the chest, sat wide on the model’s shoulders, off the waist and slouched through the skirt. There were floral prints bright enough to be from the 50s and 60s but in slightly deranged proportions made more interesting by the hair and makeup – fly aways and bare faces respectively. The combination made me feel things, like a desire to rewatch The Virgin Suicides and reminisce about being a despondent youth in the suburbs. While on the other hand, the paper-bag skirts, lop-sided but elegant tailoring and leather mini-skirt suits made me want to immediately move to Milan and become an architect (or date one) so I could wear them.
Then finally in Paris there was Sarah Burton’s debut for Givenchy. Her departure from McQueen at the end of 2023 sparked a flurry of concern about the lack of female creative directors. In almost too neat a response, her return to the runway was dedicated to the female form.
“I want to address everything about modern women. Strength, vulnerability, emotional intelligence, feeling powerful or very sexy. All of it,” she said. “It’s my natural instinct to go back to pattern-cutting, to craftsmanship. To cut, shape and proportion. It’s what I feel, how I work, and want to do.”
I did not love everything she sent down the runway – mesh dresses and bodysuits don’t interest me. But her powerfully proportioned tailoring and the silhouettes that accentuated the line of the neck made me wish I had an important event to attend or a party to throw that I needed to feel good for. One mid-length dress captured both – the shoulders were so accentuated they lifted off the body to sit high beneath the chin like a collar, from there they plunged straight into a neckline that extended to the navel. The sum of the dress’s parts were balanced by the width of the sleeve.
All of these clothes made me think a lot about what it takes to feel beautiful as a woman, and how good it feels to be wearing something that you know is beautiful. There is a deep power in this particular kind of femininity since it is not about the male gaze, it exists purely for women who are dressing for themselves. There is a lightness to each of these collections that begets the ability to play. The kind of play designed for women who want to feel silk against their skin, the drape of wool twill around their calves and the power of an accentuated shoulder. None of it has anything to do with our opposite gender, and inadvertently the ideas on offer are a welcome refuge from the news, an internal space that exists out of their reach and just for us.