And was Tiffany Brown somehow boring?
Nothing in the Tiffany Brown Designs Fall/Winter 2022 collection enticed us to wear it, let alone buy it. It was superfluous. It was shallow. It was faux leather and faux fur, the color of the signifier “pumpkin spice.”
Sure, fake leather and faux fur are more sustainable than real, more ethical; but they sure did make the clothes look cheap and shoddy. She was giving him Shein. Of course, the clothes might not be made with wage labor. But if you really want to be sustainable, ethical and fashionable, just stick with materials that are neither unsustainable nor unethical nor simulacra thereof. After all, the hyperreal never satisfies, and unfortunately we’re nowhere near the hyperreal of haute couture.
(Personal photo of Manasa Gudavalli)
We are, however, up to our necks in spectacle. And if spectacle is not so much a set of images as “a social relationship between people, mediated by images,” as Guy Debord argues in “The Society of the Spectacle,” then spectacle was alive and well at the Tiffany Brown show. There was a woman dressed as a loofah with a Brobdingnag black bow in her hair to tie the whole together. The outfits of the crowd—we’d say “audience,” but they were there more to be seen than to see—were extravagant; Not the flamboyant haute couture kind, though, but the flashy, tasteless kind: tacky cuts, garish colours, tasteless color blocking. It was “Emily in Paris” multiplied by 10. Nobody was dressed well, objectively speaking. NYFW is not about your experience. It is about the experience that others perceive you to have.
Maybe the trick worked. But the crowd clashed jarringly with the collection. The common denominator was in bad taste: the crowd, because it exuded the comfortable distaste of privilege, and the collection, because it fell miles short of its projected course.
(Personal photo of Manasa Gudavalli)
(Personal photo of Manasa Gudavalli)
“It’s luxury,” designer Tiffany Brown said of her FW22 designs. “We’re a little bit sexier, it’s more of a date night, where it’s Valentine’s Day. So I wanted to give people something that was a little more varied… The brown collection is just more fun, more beautiful, more opportunities to show a different side of the woman.”
Safely. The fact is that it was a NYFW show, but the clothes belonged on page three of fashionnova.com. Take, for example, the muddy brown faux leather dress with cutouts at the hips. It’s the same cropped silhouette that has been littering Forever 21’s backstage and browser tabs for what seems like forever. The same cropped silhouette that has since become such a micro-trend that even TikTok fashion gurus would admit is a micro-trend. And sorry, but microtrends have no place in designer collections debuting at NYFW.
(Personal photo of Manasa Gudavalli)
Or take, in another case, the tulle skirt dotted with roses that looked like doorknobs. If our 13-year-old son made that skirt at craft camp, we could be proud parents. But as it stands, we were standing at Slate NYC, “New York City’s most exciting event space,” according to its website, watching amateur models walk like automatons between concrete pillars on a dance floor turned runway. Even the DJ seemed bored. The tulle, paired with a slinky brown leotard-like top reminiscent of Kim Kardashian’s leggings, gave nothing less than a child’s ballet recital costume. The dried flowers hanging from the tulle might as well have been plucked straight from Hobby Lobby or from Michael, maybe from Joanne, and definitely from the bottom shelf. What could have been a statement detail that puts a dot on an otherwise indifferent outfit became another question mark.
“I wanted to add a little more femininity,” Brown said of the dried brown flowers. “For the color, [the design] It seemed a little rougher, a little coarser. He wanted to soften the look a little bit.”
(Personal photo of Manasa Gudavalli)
The interrogative punctuation mark, in fact, might be the best way to sum up the whole experience, which ended in a stark blue tulle gown that was like Dillard’s off-brand Cinderella going to prom alone. Tiffany Brown Designs bases each collection, each season, on a specific color. Brown opted for lavender last season. This season, she opted for brown.
But here’s the thing: the color brown has had its moment, a trend spawned by TikTok’s aesthetic stemming from ’90s culture and Y2K nostalgia. Brown’s brown, however, suits more the conscious millennial elements of New York’s decadent bourgeoisie. Additionally, TikTok trends are based on the curated (in)authenticity of younger influencers, a peculiar context that designers cannot replicate given the nature of high-end fashion and the vibe at NYFW.
Last Season’s Lavender Collection It might not have been great, but at least it was tasteful and wearable. The designs weren’t new and certainly wouldn’t draw attention to themselves, but at least they didn’t hurt the eyes. The materials seemed to be of higher quality. The cuts were more timeless. However, this season’s Brown Brown collection was lacking—in fabric, color, cut, class—which left us wanting nothing to do with it. Except, perhaps, for his message.
“We’re really on the cusp right now of the first black woman being nominated and appointed to the Supreme Court,” Brown said. “So we are very excited and I wanted to celebrate the melanin of all people of all races. And that’s why I chose brown. And then of course my last name is Brown, so I don’t have a choice.”
Tiffany Brown Designs, in transition from a moderate brand to a luxury brand, according to Brown, will open a store in SoHo in the summer of 2022, in Paris in the fall of 2022 and in Shanghai in 2023.
(Personal photo of Manasa Gudavalli)
Contact Manasa Gudavalli at [email protected] and Trace Miller in [email protected]
Source: nyunews.com