THE NEW CREATIVE DIRECTORS OF DKNY, DAO-YI CHOW AND MAXWELL OSBORNE, EXPLORE A LAND OF STATUS AND SEXUALITY

BY TIFFANY PRESS

At first glance of the audience at the Spring 2016 Public School show, one could be looking at one of veteran Big Apple houses (Kors, DVF…Vera Wang). After further absorption, it becomes clear that the view here is of a frontier; one where high meets low, hard meets soft, and where rule makers and breakers co-mingle. Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chow will long be considered two of the early settlers of this brave new land, and it’s for this reason principally that DKNY is now under their design direction.

The duo that also make up the Public School brand have long been billboards for the urban aesthetic. In 2008, the New York natives launched the label with a focus on razor-sharp precision and identifiable NYC street culture. It quickly gained traction among a rich variety of male tastemakers, from top fashion editors to young “hypebeasts.” Eventually, the Council of Fashion Designers of America took notice, awarding the Public School cool kids its Swarovski Menswear award. When the first womens wear looks were considered in 2013, they were met with a significant conceptual challenge, however. Would they follow in the footsteps of brands such as the now defunct Band of Outsiders and design for their male customer’s girlfriend? Would they design for a brand new girl, one with the same fashion ideals as that male customer? Frank fully, they chose the latter. Since then, the duo has created a power brand representative of this new contemporary.

Because, there is a new idea of modernity brewing in the industry, and Dao-Yi and Maxwell have been a significant part of it. Along with Shaun Oliver’s HBA, Virgil Abloh’s Off-White, Gosha Rubchinskiy, and the Vetements collective, Public School is making a case for the merging of streetwear with high fashion rather than the acceptance of streetwear by high fashion. In other words, the proverbial tide is turning.

The Public School Spring 2016 collection was nothing if not a campaign to become the arbiter of what that new contemporary represents for the City, and the 2015 appointment to DKNY sent a strong message to the New York fashion community about the liquidity and diversity of design talent today. Designers who are able to not only produce high-quality work but be visible spokespeople for that work are able to take on a diverse portfolio of creative projects and can grab the attention of a range of customers. The appointment of designers who only premiered their very first womenswear look just a short two years ago to one of the most visible New York-based brands in the world is something that would simply never have happened 10 years ago.

As designers, Public School has made an excellent habit of playing on the undervalued sensibilities of modern women. While status and sexuality are ever-present sensibilities in fashion, they are oversaturated. What Public School and the other brands that are thriving in this arena are pushing is an appreciation for malleability and androgyny, and the Spring 2016 show was a continuation of that doctrine, which includes multi-purposing of high-quality, feather-light fabrics and moldable silhouettes that depend on personal styling to define a final look. On hand is also the ability to repurpose somewhat inconvenient ideas to real-life wearability, such as cement-sweeping crisp white separates. The looks are not overly styled to distract the viewer from personal interpretation, and that’s where the Public School designers reign supreme. Put more simply: there’s an easiness to the brands’s approach to glamour that speaks to the new guard of customer and influencer alike.

What one witnesses when watching young designers working with a young label and masterminding relatively young concepts is a voice based on immediacy, and these two are designing a collection very much rooted in what women want to look like right now. Dao-Yi and Maxwell have made a craft of appealing to the full range; high and low, street and cerebral, masculine and feminine; theirs a full palette of contradictions in the best way possible, one that is turning the high fashion paradigm on its head.

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