Can a Brand Reboot Ever Really Work?

There are no second acts in American lives, but somehow there are in American fashion. The opening day of New York Fashion Week had two. First, a new chapter for Proenza Schouler under the direction of Rachel Scott. I wasn’t sold on that effort — wearable clothes, but it lacked some nerve. My colleague Vanessa has the full verdict.

I was more compelled by Public School, the men’s wear label led by Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chow, which returned to the runway after a seven-year hiatus. They once ascended about as high as an American label can go: a CFDA award, a DKNY design job, GQ features. But financial realities derailed them. I always thought of Public School as a brand broken by Barneys, and it tracked that both entities went kaput about the same time.

Walking into the show, I thought why come back? What’s the use? I’m still not sold. They are reintroducing the label in a market that has grown even icier during their absence. (Saks’s bankruptcy continues to be the topic of the front row.)

But the well-liked pair showed on Wednesday night that they remain capable and textbook “cool” in a manner that vaults them past most strivers showing in New York.

With a front row cheering section that included the ex-NBAer Joakim Noah and the comedian Ronny Chieng (Maxwell and Chow said they funded the reboot through friends and family), the duo sent out dressy near-midnight jeans, double-breasted suits with an all-the-way across the belly closure and startlingly luxe blue leather trousers. There were collaborative two-tone Jordan 15s and domed hats that could’ve tiptoed out of Erykah Badu’s closet.

Was anything that new? Well, no. A friend described it, positively, as clothes for going out in 2016. However, what Osbourne and Chow demonstrated is that they can pick the right leather, sculpt a sport coat shoulder, marry black with blue. Is that a low bar? Yes. But they cleared it. The question now is how much higher they can go. Again.

Other things worth knowing about:

I keep thinking about the singer Lana Del Rey’s swamp boat tour captain husband Jeremy Dufrene’s head-to-toe RRL outfit at the Ralph Lauren show on Tuesday. Dufrene is not the standard client of Lauren’s rugged-for-the-rich subbrand. That is to say, he isn’t a tech billionaire cosplaying as Butch Cassidy. A camo-wearing Cajun, Dufrene is more like the source of RRL’s rough-hewed look than its upscale scrubbing up. Seeing him in a $1,900 cigar brown leather jacket was a bit like watching a diner owner eat an $80 hamburger. You get the sense that Dufrene would rather have gone back to the real thing.
Even in a collection that doesn’t land, you can often sniff out a good idea or two. Take the models’ slouchy socks at Coach, all bunched up like ’80s leg warmers. Sitting there, it hit me that last year I ran into the photographer Cam Hicks wearing scrunchy socks, though his didn’t look like a dog had mauled them. Turns out he made them himself, under the name Hicks. Look them up.
I will take any excuse to push the potato shoe agenda, and so I was pleased to see Proenza’s spud-y heels.

“We’ve always felt like we’ve had a responsibility to use our platform for more than just fashion.”

— Dao-Yi Chow, who backstage at Public School was wearing a shirt he made for the label that read U.S. Department of Homeland Insecurity, a commentary, he said, on the state of immigration enforcement in America.

The Indelible Hair of the Day

It’s rare to see something you’ve actually never seen before during New York Fashion Week. This woman at Coach — not part of the runway — with roses laced into her hair, provided just that.