New York Fashion Week just ended this past Thursday, February 16th. We all know that every season of fashion week looks a little like this,
filled with beautiful collections and the hottest new trends,
creative designers and gorgeous models slaying our lives,
legs longer than runways,
beautiful clothes we could never afford,
every Hollywood celebrity ever,
and of course, Yeezy.
Overall, we can agree that fashion week is pretty much everything fashion related...right? During this season of New York Fashion Week, it wasn't. Thanks to the current political atmosphere, this season's fashion week wasn'
This season's New York Fashion Week was filled with designers throwing major shade against Trump by making daring statements through their innovative collections. Here are 5 amazing designers that established bold fashion week moments that can never be forgotten:
Maxwell Osborne and Dao-Yi Chow
These designers of the Public School collection deserve the award for Most Shade-Throwing because of their tee shirts and hats saying, "Make America New York" in the same design and color as Trump's campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again." This was shown on the runway as a fierce statement against the president.
Prabal Gurung
This designer boldly shone a light on the feminist movement during New York Fashion Week. His designs stood out due to their representation of positive, inspirational messages of female empowerment through various simple, minimal tee shirts. The shirts had statements such as, "The future is female," "Girls just want to have fundamental rights," "Our minds our bodies our power," "Feminist AF," "We should all be feminists," and many more.
Hillary Taymour
Taymour's designs not only stood out for their feminist and androgynist approach, but also for the models that symbolized them. Her idea behind her Fall/Winter '17 collection, Collina Strada, was to cast models from all seven countries that Trump put on his travel/immigration ban. She admitted the difficulty of her idea, but managed to pull it off for most of the models she cast. Her pro-choice, LGBT rights, women's rights and immigration rights views (which are completely against Trump's) inspired her to produce her unique and significant collection.
Christian Siriano
Personally, I believe this designer's collection has broken the biggest wall in the fashion industry in terms of diversity. The fashion industry has had an issue with a shortage of diversity for far too long. It's notoriously known for mainly using extremely thin white women as models. Soriano confronted this issue by including models of not only all races, cultures and religions, but also of all shapes and sizes, into his collection. He is one of very few designers that has incorporated so many plus size models – specifically, 27 – into his work. He is a sincere supporter of women's empowerment and wanted to display that support through his models and designs. He also presented compelling sayings, like "People are people," on his designs, in opposition to the women's values praised by Trump.
(Curves are beautiful ladies!)
Anniesa Hasibuan
This Indonesian designer made history at NYFW in 2016 as the first designer to present his/her collection with all hijab-wearing models at NYFW. So this 2017 season, she specifically featured all hijab-wearing immigrant models to present her Fall/Winter 2017 collection at last week's Fashion Week in New York. Her simple, elegant and modest designs make a statement against stereotypes against immigrants and Muslims both. She is breaking barriers against Trump's policies and giving modest fashion a voice in the fashion industry.
This season's NYFW was not what we expected, and that is not a bad thing. Models, fashion designers, celebrities, fans, reporters and everyone else a part of NYFW personally challenged Trump's laws and ideas in their own ways this season. It is so refreshing to see that huge events like the Grammy Awards and NYFW are standing up for what they believe in through their art. Especially since the fashion industry has not expressed much diversity in the past, seeing this change is a big step for the industry and society in general. This NYFW was truly like no other. Clearly, politics and fashion can collide, just with an interesting twist. Continue to slay your OOTD's, always with your values on your sleeve!
