Fashion Week is back in full force, and there’s a lot to see. Blink (or scroll too fast on Instagram) and you’ll miss the details: tiny bags, tall shoes, feathered hats, leather capes and diamond dog collars. Every day we’ll spotlight one thing we saw on the runways that delighted or mystified us.
When was the last time a ruffled floral bed skirt seemed cool? If you caught the Collina Strada runway show on Tuesday, the first major event of New York Fashion Week, the answer is: very recently.
On a rooftop in the Sunset Park neighborhood of Brooklyn, the creative director Hillary Taymour unveiled several eye-catching shoes for spring 2022. There were pastel sneakers with sequined brooches — stars and flowers in cartoonish shapes and bright hues — pinned to their toe boxes.
There were black sneakers only half visible beneath Technicolor disposable-style shoe covers. (For good measure, some models also went totally barefoot. “You dress for the mess,” the show notes read.)
Sneakers aren’t a new game for Collina Strada, which collaborated with Reebok earlier this year on shoes made in part from vegan leather and recycled polyester. (Text at the back of the heels: “Call mom.”) The earthy-punk brand, still relatively young, has become known for using sustainable materials and natural dyes.
But at Tuesday’s show, a pair of sneakers wrapped in green and pink florals was particularly memorable, a strip of fabric flouncing off its edges, reminiscent of outdated bed-and-breakfast bedding. The company said it used olive butterfly lace.
Maybe it’s because this year’s Met Gala is mere days away, but the wraparound print felt spiritually connected to the floral wallpaper Givenchy dress worn by a very pregnant Kim Kardashian in 2013, or at least the many memes that followed, comparing the gown to an old couch.
These were shoes with a sense of humor, worn by a model in a matching bodysuit who skipped and leapt her way down a sun-drenched garden path turned runway. Like most of Ms. Taymour’s pieces, the shoes were equally soft and hard, pretty and aggressive — pawns in the designer’s game of finding new and exuberant ways to tell old stories.
