The Brand Made for New York Cowgirls
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Raffaella Hanley, creative director at Lou Dallas, didn’t make a mood board for her Fall 2024 collection. It all “just kinda fell into place,” she told me after her show, which took place Wednesday at Joseph Carini Carpets in TriBeCa. Her goal, she said, was to channel the feeling of the “girls she grew up with in high school.” That’s how I instantly knew she was from New York City.
For me, Hanley’s patchwork skirts, dresses, and tops evoked a kind of excited nostalgia. The models reminded me of my own friends growing up in New York, back before TikTok, when no one would have admitted to trying hard to dress like an “eccentric grandpa.” Instead, we were inspired by the eccentric grandpas we actually saw on the subway, or who owned the carpet shops our parents went to.
Hanley admitted to sourcing all of her fabrics in Los Angeles, but it’s New York she describes as a “magnet.” To her it is a vortex, as mythic and irresistible as the Bermuda Triangle. “For whatever reason … I just can’t leave this goddamn place,” she said.
Although she did, for a bit. And not the city in its entirety, but its fashion scene. Hanley has been notably missing from the New York Fashion Week calendar for three years. “The clothes,” she insisted, “were just ready … I was just waiting until I felt like I had a collection that I wanted to show.”
The 22 looks she presented on the final day of New York Fashion Week were largely asymmetrical, like a short denim miniskirt split in half with tiered white ruffles falling off the side, or a pair of black pinstripe pants with three large stripe cutouts on one leg. Off-the-shoulder tops had lacy crisscross straps and corseting details that made it impossible to tell where one fabric began and another ended. Single pieces looked like multiple tops worn on top of each other, mimicking the signature maximalist layering style of Gen Z.
They all had the special feel of one-of-a-kind vintage finds plucked from obscurity. And it’s hard not to think they’d maintain that quality even if you saw multiple girls wearing the same Lou Dallas piece all lined up in a row, because Hanley imbues them with so much personality.
At one point during the show, I felt reminded of the country-western zaniness of Hannah Montana, with her double life and wardrobe. If there were downtown cowgirls, this is what they’d wear. And as I was formulating that thought, a remix (of course) of Mark Ronson’s “Nothing Breaks Like a Heart”—featuring Miley Cyrus—came on. “When our music producer played that song,” Hanley said, “everything just suddenly made so much sense.”
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