NEW YORK, Sept 10 — Escada celebrated its 40th anniversary yesterday by making its New York Fashion Week debut with soft power dressing for the working woman — an upbeat and colorful collection that paid tribute to the 1980s.
Models strode down a serpentine grass runway for the Munich-based luxury brand’s first runway show since 2015 and the second full collection of young Irish designer Niall Sloan, who joined Escada last year and who earlier in his career spent a decade at Burberry.
There were power suits with big gold buttons and gold chain belts, in bright colors with boxy jackets cut loose and comfortable, paired with tennis shoes that evoked joyfulness and ease of movement.
Sloan explained that the concept was “very, very soft power dressing” for the modern working woman. If shoulder pads were the 1980s way of muscling into a man’s world, in the 2010s it’s about being effortless.
“You’re still the mother, the carer, the sister, the diplomat, the person who holds things together so the wardrobe needs to be the least complicated part of your day,” he told AFP.
“I want you to put something in the morning and feel effortless and go throughout the day and kind of not think about it anymore because you have enough to do.”
Escada has a strong working women’s identity. It was founded in 1978 by Margaretha Ley and her husband, and is today owned by Megha Mittal, who acquired the brand in 2009 after it filed for bankruptcy.
“She’s that icon, she’s that entrepreneurial woman that back in 1978 forged this business,” said Sloan of Ley.
Lightness counters difficult times
“She really got the epitome of that strong woman. She was also able to carry bold patterns,” he said. “It’s thinking if she were alive today, what would she be doing and being inspired by strong women.”
Escada’s spring/summer 2019 was a riot of bright color from yellow jackets to fuscia skirts, oversized silk shirts to red, orange and colorful jackets covered in colorful ESCADA letters.
There were black dresses covered in bright florals, and contrast in the form of beige and cream, with plenty of stripes and dots — an homage to Julia Roberts in “Pretty Woman” with a reinvention of the brown dress with white polka dots she wore to the races in the movie.
Equestrian prints and jockey motifs harked back to the brand’s origins. The name Escada came from a racehorse that Margaretha and Wolfgang Ley spotted at a racetrack.
Sloan said the ideal Escada customer was “amazing, creative women that are changing the way we see the world,” signaling out the American singer Solange Knowles, better known as Beyonce’s little sister.
“She has such a creative eye, she’s an activist, she supports women, she builds communities and she has an incredible pedigree,” he said.
As befits the best of any anniversary collection, it looked back as well as forward. Sloan said Ley was a constant inspiration and that her collections were “always done with a touch of lightness.”
“Especially today, when things are heavy and dark and difficult and we don’t know the way through, it’s good to deal with that with a light touch,” he told reporters. “I think it’s a very female strength.” — AFP
