The Tamesis
The Park Avenue Armory is designed for large-scale installations, and Catherine Holstein and her husband, Griffin Frazen, orchestrated one last night. A 60-foot-tall, more-feet-wide LED display displaying letters, numbers, symbols and the occasional full word demonstrated to New York Fashion Week’s most glamorous crowd the seriousness of the Khaite brand’s intentions and the scale of its success. Front row: Not just Post Malone, but the best players of the season so far, love storySarah Pidgeon wore a Carolyn Bessette Kennedy style little black dress and heels.
Just as Bessette Kennedy personified the late ’90s, the Khaite woman personified the mid-2020s, with her Arizona ankle boots and east-west Kye bag flashing a proverbial status and the ability to pay for it to anyone who could read the logo. Denim and knitwear are another engine of the Khaite brand. On the runway, though, Holstein prefers to focus on tailoring, mostly in black, often leather, and dresses, which often provide a soft, flowy foil to her jackets and trousers. She favors cloud-like organza or tulle, almost no color, and dainty straps.
She said backstage that the collection was inspired by recent viewings of F is for fakeis a 1973 documentary written, directed and starring the mad genius Orson Welles. This is a film for an art-school kid of a certain generation, so densely constructed but with so little substance that it’s nearly unwatchable with the attention spans we have on TikTok today. Holstein was deeply impressed by Wells’s ideas – “how do we value art, how do we value authenticity, who are the arbiters of taste” – and the sartorial styles of the time.
She saw them as inspiration for officer jackets with decorative braids on the chest, colorful flowers pinned to lace shirts and alligator-tail coats, narrow, full skirts with paintings by Milton Avery, and even the models’ claw-like fake nails. “It goes back to the provocative nature of risk-taking,” she says, “I’m also pushing my own boundaries.”
Silhouette-wise, her flowing midi dress has become one of the signature looks of the week. She also tried on a lace slip dress that looked inches off her body. But her most provocative ideas may be her shoes; this season’s pointy-toe heels and boots are not designed for the traditional comfortable, smooth fit, but for ruffles that are almost magically large. If Holstein can lead these trends, he’s a mad genius.
