Vaquera Is Making New York Fashion Week Cool Again

Last night the cool kids of New York gathered at the Ukrainian National Home for Vaquera’s first official fashion show on the New York Fashion Week schedule.

Now on it’s 4th year, the Vaquera collective—helmed by Patrick DiCaprio, alongside David Moses, Bryn Taubensee, and Claire Sully—showed a highly conceptual collection that cleverly mixed humor with politics.

“It was about industry versus excess, blue collar versus white collar,” said DiCaprio after the show, which translated into a life-size jewelry pouches in Tiffany’s iconic shade of robin’s egg blue, but with VAQUERA & CO. stamped on it, instead of company’s name; there was a short chef gown with giant balloon sleeves and a voluminous skirt (complete with a tall toque) which suggested Nicolas Ghesquiere’s Balenciaga meets ‘80s prom dress; there was construction worker in a acid bleached Canadian tuxedo and a pair of sensible heels. It was a somewhat baffling, eclectic mix but there were still super wearable pieces throughout the collection including a t-shirt with a logo that reads VAQUERA AUTO BODY & REPAIR, taking the whole designer merch line strictly out of the Vetements’ playbook, smart white shirt dresses that women of any age could wear, and red velvet ruched sweater that could be worn with jeans or with a smart skirt. A look of oversized jeans worn with VAQUERA-suspenders, a matching, very Gaultier-esque bustier and corset–captured that perfect combination of edgy and wearable. It seems like it was tailor-made for Rihanna.

The fashion world continuously obsessed with youth culture and it seems like in recent years New York had lost its cool kid reputation to cities like London and Paris. It was refreshing to see Vaquera turning New York fashion on its head again like the era of designers like As Four and Miguel Adrover. Seeing a model come down the runway in a dress made from multiple American flags, felt like just the right amount of subversive, the right amount of disruption. Let’s hear it for the upstarts.

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