New York Fashion Week: Morphine Generation
Erik Hart is never at a loss for inspiration, and his Autumn/Winter 2007 collection is no exception. Hart showed his latest collection for the first time in New York on Feb. 2 at the People’s Revolution Fashion Week Space in the Altman Building. The collection has grown from hip, embroidered rock ’n’ roll T-shirts sold in Los Angeles boutiques just 3 1/2 years ago to a grown-up, sophisticated collection with serious themes.
In shades of black, champagne, nude, gray, smoky white and olive, the collection takes cues from the visual arts, fashion, music and philosophy of a Slovenian art collective and from the dress codes of secret societies.
Hart created his own secret society named Socieacute;teacute; MG 1979 to illustrate the theme. “I imagined in a secret society people who identify other people in the society by the way they dressed with subtle details and concepts, such as a button,” said the designer. Masonic culture and the music of Alan Vega also inspired the collection, which Hart says is for the customer who challenges convention—dreamers, artists and free thinkers.
Each season, Hart challenges himself with a new skill, and this season he added Saville Row tailoring to his repertoire. He used silk to bind seams and covered antique brass buttons with silk chiffon for a masking effect. His menswear looks speak to the artistic intellectual. He paired a chunky cardigan with dark denim jeans and classic menswear shoes and layered a graphic tee under a military-inspired coat with lightly frayed edges and a bow tie draped subtly around the neck. The effect is rebellious, yet intellectual and polished.
Hart continued to experiment with androgynous themes for his women’s collection by pairing menswear-inspired button-down shirts with high-waist overalls and T-shirts with elegant oversize trouser looks inspired by German actress Marlene Dietrich.
Other women’s styles included dresses such as a draped silk/cashmere sheath wrapped with a black PVC belt and a champagne wool sweater dress with images of a blurred Lord Byron. Fabrications—such as the lustrous black on a waxcoated knit tank and linen shorts worn with a gabardine jacket and a sleek, perfectly tailored cotton sateen suit—mimic the dark, mysterious look of black metal.
—N. Jayne Seward
