Catherine Holstein likes a moody set. Pier 61 was pitch black as the crowd assembled at the edges of the massive space. You could barely see through the dim a few seats down the row, let alone make out the people across the runway to gossip about them. Human communion is part of the fashion show experience, and Khaite shows would be more effective if Holstein took that into consideration.
Still, this was an evocative show, with Thom Yorke and Ian Curtis wailing into the darkness. Holstein lost her mom not too long ago, and the collection was both a lament and a tribute to her memory. Backstage, she described her late mother as an impossibly chic New York woman, who kept lipstick on her bedside table to apply before her feet touched the floor.
That’s the vision Holstein conjured on the catwalk. The models had glossy red lips and some wore sunglasses at night. Khaite recently renewed its partnership with the eyewear company Oliver Peoples, and you can picture a beauty range coming sometime not far down the line in this growing brand’s future.
The shapes of her coats and jackets, with their exaggerated Claude Montana-ish shoulders, generous cowl necklines, and full sleeves evoked the late ’80s and early ’90s, when Holstein would’ve been a young child playing in her mom’s closet. A dressed-up sensibility permeated the collection, which was heavy on leather and shearling, the latter used quite effectively for tailored jackets paired with both tapered trousers and a pleated midi skirt.
Holstein is a new mother herself, but the push-and-pull of work-life balance didn’t surface here. There was little sense of what the Khaite woman might wear in her down time, when she slips out of her hard New York shell into something softer. That would be worth delving into in future collections.
Backstage she talked about the practice of design, specifically the process of draping silk gazar. One sculptural top was originally meant to be a dress, but as the model slid into it at the fitting and lifted its hem to put on shoes, Holstein preferred the curving volumes of it bunched up at her hips, and it was reworked at the last minute. “I want women to feel exhilarated when they put on my clothes,” she said. It was clear that the work of draping that silk gazar gave her something like that feeling, which was nice to see.
