Caroline Hu Is Our First Discovery of NYFW—And Her Dresses Belong at the Oscars
Caroline Hu Is Our First Discovery of NYFW—and Her Dresses Belong at the Oscars
The words princess dress are enough to make a fashion editor cringe. They conjure something stuffy, prom-y, cloyingly feminine, and a little backwards, a reminder of Disney damsels waiting to be saved by their princes. No one wants to feel like that in 2019—but maybe we just need to redefine princess. Four days into the Fall season, we’ve seen a wave of transportive, romantic, fairy-tale-worthy confections—stuff we might have deemed “princess-y” in the past. (See: Rodarte, Tomo Koizumi.) Now, they feel revelatory and happily impractical; in uncertain times, why not dress for a different reality? The woman who will wear these gowns (or at least dream of wearing them) couldn’t get excited about the streetwear thing; what thrills her is color, emotion, and fantasy. She doesn’t pay attention to trends, nor can she abide those subway ads telling her to streamline her life by wearing basics and joining subscription plans.
That woman is going to be really into Caroline Hu. If you were at the Parsons MFA Spring 2018 show, her name might sound familiar. She was among the nine students who debuted their senior thesis collections on the runway; the year prior, Jahnkoy’s Maria Kazakova; Kozaburo Akasaka; and Snow Xue Gao and were on the same stage. Hu’s larger-than-life, hand-finished tulle confections were the finale in that show, and she was swiftly hired by Jason Wu and Tory Burch. Fall 2019 marks her solo debut, and today’s nine looks were a continuation of what she showed at Parsons—just a little less gargantuan, and surprisingly soft and forgiving.
From afar, the dresses looked like paintings, with “brushstrokes” of embroidered fabrics, cascading bits of silk, sprays of tulle, and seemingly random pops of color. Each one went through a smocking machine—more than once—to create the dense, accordion-like pleats, and Hu layered anywhere from 10 to 20 fabrics to create highs and lows like what you’d see in an oil painting. A clever touch: The models’ earrings (designed by Stacey Huang) were an abstraction of Hu’s name, sort of like how an artist signs their work. (Better than a logo!)
The jumping-off point for it all was the1894 Henri Matisse painting Woman Reading, depicting a woman in a black dress paging through a book. Most designers look to his more famous, ultra-saturated works, but that dress stood out to Hu; Matisse added depth and detail to it despite its dark, singular color, and it inspired Hu to figure out how to create a similar effect with textiles. Her black LBD was the closest nod, combining so many types of black fabric—velvet, tulle, silk, et al.—that she couldn’t recall the exact number.
The black was an outlier, though; most of Hu’s dresses are bursting with color. A blush tulle midi dress embroidered with blue silk, green “leaves,” and splashes of yellow felt surprisingly wearable (especially with the beat-up sneakers Karen Kaiser styled with it). It was tempting to wonder if the ice-blue gown was a subversive wink at Cinderella’s iconic dress, or if Hu had Belle from Beauty and the Beast in mind when she designed the unraveling yellow one. Maybe not. But we’re crossing our fingers a celebrity wears one of Hu’s pieces to the Oscars, where those old-school ideas about “princess dresses” and ball gowns still dominate.
