The Biggest Trend At New York Fashion Week? Copycats, According To Rachel Tashjian

Blatant nods to The Row are all over the place, reports the Washington Post fashion critic, as countless New York designers chase the sensibility – and success – of the Olsens’ lauded luxury brand.

There is one dominant trend materialising at this season of New York Fashion Week shows: knocking off The Row.

A designer with credentials from The Row, the extraordinarily luxurious brand started 19 years ago by former actresses Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, has become the calling card du jour. Calvin Klein’s new designer, Veronica Leoni, touts experience there, and the revival of the shoe line Herbert Levine is helmed by a former Row designer, the guy responsible for those $890 jelly shoes you may have seen all over TikTok.

The most Instagrammed presentation of the season is by Colleen Allen, now in her third season, who came from the Row. (A few years ago, Phoebe Philo’s Céline was the name to have on your résumé; Peter Do, Daniel Lee and Matthieu Blazy all worked there. In fact, the Row’s current golden era started as ardent Philo-philia. Some say the designs haven’t moved past it.)

Even when a designer hasn’t spent time in the Olsen spaceship, blatant nods to The Row are all over the place: in the ladylike bags and the covered-up chic on Khaite’s runway, the freaky hats and mesh shoes at Altuzarra, and the sentimental nods to golden-age couturiers like Fortuny and Jeanne Lanvin at Fforme and Prabal Gurung. Creative directors believe that an interesting outfit means you have a rich inner life. Sometimes that’s true, but with all this copying going on, we’re mostly seeing wearable credit card debt.

The Row’s clothing and styling sensibility, masterfully crafted by stylist Brian Molloy, are on many editors, influencers and Substackers at the shows: People are wearing little pillbox hats, low-heeled pumps, tastefully oversize trousers and monochrome outfits with a single red accessory. They can find the right knockoffs at affordable retailer Cos. They are putting together old Prada and Comme des Garçons from the RealReal with Olsenian aplomb. The Substackian lust for “having taste” always seems to go back to these two petite women, so private they don’t use social media or even bow at the close of their show, whose stores are decorated with rugs by Jean Lurçat and art by Julian Schnabel. In October, the recent opening of their store in Paris led to lines that snaked around the block.

These New York-based luxury brands with a feel for the eccentric, and that desire to project this snobbily fabulous intuition, are scuttling all over the American fashion scene. Let’s call them and their practitioners the Rowdents.

What is it about The Row that drives people, and other designers, wild?

First of all, the stuff is great. Yes, its runway shows, which, despite its American ownership, take place in its airy Paris atelier and where cellphones are famously banned, are high-minded, some a wild love note to 1990s Yohji Yamamoto and others a pared-down offering of Carhartt-like pants and T-shirts. (It’ll show its collection during Paris Fashion Week in early March.) But if you need a great pair of trousers, a beautiful coat or a statement bag that doesn’t yell the name of its maker, The Row has got you. Just be prepared to pay. (You can see why its sample sales cause a frenzy.) Most of all, it’s doing something genius - going smaller in feeling, more intimate and old-fashioned, when everyone else is trying to talk to everyone on the biggest stage. It understands that women don’t want to be screamed at but whispered to.

Allen and Joseph Altuzarra are the ones who have taken up the playbook best. Allen’s collections are humble but assertive selections of white bloomers and shirts and skinny, fleecy knits, plus a handful of Elizabethan robe coats. But it is nonetheless an entire world to sink into. “I’m inspired by historic wardrobing, where coats really were like gowns and the underpinnings were the base of the wardrobe,” she said. You can imagine pulling on that great coat, with a slight cut to the base of the spine and a removable bustle to give the hip a bit of kick, and wearing it out to a fancy dinner for five weekends straight. The idea is to have just a few items that are so good you rush to wear them again and again.

Altuzarra is speaking to a woman who craves irreverence but may find The Row alienating (or too expensive). He hands out books (this season was Wuthering Heights) and stuffs them with mood-board pictures and wraps them in fabric, a sweet gesture that mostly makes my heart ache for the intern stuck doing that job for a day-and-a-half, and does wonderful coats, really good hats (including hand-sewn turbans and skullcaps hand-beaded in India) and posh clothing with charm. Women of all ages and sizes would look good in his trousers, coats and jackets. They are fitted and generous, not oversize.

Khaite may be the name that many customers see as the closest ally to The Row, and its stores are some of the best in the luxury business, but Catherine Holstein’s aesthetic is really a pale and pretentious imitation, shown in self-serious settings.

This season was a UFO-like huge glowing circle. (“Take me to your leaderrrrr,” the show cooed, and pointed a long, spindly finger at The Row.) Pretentiousness can be extremely cool, but the clothes don’t have the intellectual heft to justify all that moody hoopla. It’s just a rerun of last season’s runway hits: Loewe leather and Saint Laurent snarl, with some weird newsboy caps pulled down to a Leonardo DiCaprio or Melania Trump face-shading angle.

I watched a model walk around the ring in a ridiculously unflattering knit skirt (recalling Loewe’s recent forays into comically jumbo knitting, without the punch line), several models in weird, layered tube tops that made one breast look as if it were trying to escape from the body, and another in an organza dress that had a pointless flap of fabric lapping out at the butt, and thought: Why would a woman want to make other women dress like this?

Which raises another great question: Why is it swoony when The Row jots off old Comme and vintage Chanel references and corny when, say, Khaite does it? Every designer copies, including the greats: There were two simultaneous shows of Azzedine Alaïa’s vintage collections last year in Paris. You need to do it with creativity or integrity. (Or both, though one is enough.) Her references (the Massive Attack soundtrack, the recent runway look rehashing, mimicking last year’s Saint Laurent show design) are not obscure or deep enough to be cool. Take the technique or attitude or worldview of the garment, not just the surface idea. Otherwise you’re just vibe siphoning. And a lot of Khaite’s stuff is just heavy and, more important, unflattering.

“We’re making clothing by women, for women,” said Frances Howie, the designer from Stella McCartney and Lanvin who replaced the ousted (and terrific) Paul Helbers at Fforme. She pumped her fist. Huzzah! But all the details of her Fortuny homages, like leafy damask prints and plissé dresses that clung goddess-like to the body, plus her exceptional tailoring details, got lost on the expanse of the runway. And it wasn’t even Khaite-size real estate.

What would be really cool would be for a designer to do a show for just 70 or 100 people, and make the clothes totally goo-goo-ga-ga and mind-bogglingly expensive and gorgeous, and all made to order. Getting them wouldn’t be as cynical as becoming a couture customer, where it’s mostly about money, but you’d have to prove your mettle somehow, by showing the designer or salespeople you’re interesting and well-read. Of course, The Row already feels like it does that.

Otherwise, you run the risk of making explainer clothes. You know, things that look pretty uninteresting yet imperious somehow, but the woman wearing it justifies the crazy price by telling you all about how it was made in Italy and the fringe is hand-done. Interesting, but that gets pretty “yada yada” after a few minutes. A truly stylish woman has much more to talk about than just clothes.

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