The Spring 2018 shows that walked New York Fashion Week in September were the second full season under Raf Simons at Calvin Klein, the second under the new ownership at Coach, and the season the see-now-buy-now experiment that had been so disruptive in 2016 quietly settled into something normal. The American spring 2018 collections, taken as a body, made a single argument — that American sportswear was being rewritten as something more cerebral, more grounded in a single point of view, and less willing to compete on volume of new ideas per show. The shows we returned to most often when planning our fall buys were the ones that had a long view. Here are the houses we are watching as the spring 2018 deliveries start arriving.
Calvin Klein 205W39NYC, the second collection
Raf Simons’s second spring at Calvin Klein — staged on September 7, the day Fenty did not launch — settled the question of whether the first show had been a one-time gift or a real direction. The answer was that it was a direction. The collection continued the Western references, the school-uniform plaid, the slip dress, the shearling silhouette — but the hand was steadier and the editorial response had cooled into something closer to actual interest in buying the clothes. The pieces that will land at retail in spring 2018 — the slip skirts, the printed cotton work shirts, the simple cropped tee — are the most wearable that Simons has ever produced for an American brand. The Brian Roettinger graphics on the collection’s printed pieces will be one of the most-photographed visual signatures of the year. We are saving for one piece.
Marc Jacobs returned to ladylike
Marc Jacobs‘s spring 2018 collection was a course-correction from the controversy of the previous season — quieter, more elegant, more directly referential to the 1960s couture silhouette. The collection felt like a designer thinking out loud about what kind of work he wanted to be making at this point in his career, and the answer was tailored, ladylike, restrained. The wearable pieces — the trapeze coats, the strict knee-length skirts, the small structured handbag — read as a deliberate retreat from streetwear and a return to clothes-as-craft. The retail floor in spring 2018 is going to look different. We are watching the bag situation carefully; the small structured silhouette he sent down the runway has the makings of a real Marc Jacobs heritage piece.
Tom Ford and the New York move
Tom Ford had moved his show back to New York for the spring 2018 season, and the collection was a study in the brand’s signature confidence — sharp tailoring, unapologetic eveningwear, the kind of polished sex appeal the rest of American fashion had spent the year retreating from. Where Calvin Klein’s hand was cerebral, Tom Ford’s was unapologetic. The retail story for spring 2018 is going to be lipstick — the Tom Ford Beauty line will release new shades alongside the runway, and the brand’s beauty business has quietly become as important to the bottom line as the ready-to-wear. We are watching for the lipstick release in spring; the shades that pop on the runway tend to translate cleanly to retail.
Coach 1941 keeps building
Stuart Vevers’s third year at the helm of Coach 1941 produced one of the strongest American luxury collections of the season. The spring 2018 lineup — printed prairie dresses, varsity-coded outerwear, the Rogue handbag in a new exotic-skin variant — felt confident in a way that Coach had not felt as a brand in two decades. The acquisition of Kate Spade earlier in 2017 (announced May, finalizing through the year) had rewritten the company’s portfolio in a way that gave Coach itself room to climb upmarket. The handbag silhouettes that hit retail in spring 2018 will be in line with the Rogue and the Dinky we had bought in March; we expect a new Coach signature shape to emerge by next fall.
Michael Kors and Ralph Lauren held the line
Michael Kors‘s spring 2018 collection delivered exactly what his customer expects — clean, polished, slightly aspirational sportswear in a palette of cream, navy, camel, and white. Ralph Lauren had quieted his see-now-buy-now experiment for the season, returning to a more traditional editorial-and-retail timing. Ralph Lauren‘s spring 2018 collection — staged outdoors on Madison Avenue with a more focused sportswear lineup — felt like a brand recalibrating after a turbulent two seasons. Both houses are going to deliver their spring 2018 floors in clean, predictable, well-made volumes. There will not be controversy, and that is the point. The American sportswear conversation is still about consistency.
What we are buying for spring 2018
The wearable spring 2018 wardrobe, distilled from the September shows: a slip dress (still Calvin Klein-coded), a Tom Ford lipstick (when the spring shades land), a small structured Marc Jacobs bag (assuming the retail price holds reasonable), a Coach Rogue accessory in a new finish, and a single sharp Michael Kors blazer for the weeks that fall back into spring. We are passing on the loud see-now-buy-now experiments from the second-tier houses, on streetwear-coded pieces that will not age past 2018, and on anything that looks like a costume of a previous decade rather than an interpretation of one. The American spring season has narrowed its center — and that is a good thing. We will see you on the third Tuesday of December for the winter jewellery roundup.