The “stealth” Khaite woman has left the building. Under the spotlights of the cavernous Brooklyn Storehouse last night, a softer vision emerged. Leaving aside the white bra and high-waisted black leather hobble skirt Kaia Gerber wore to open the show, this was a collection of flower embroidered lace dresses finished with exterior basques, pastel shifts evoking antique lingerie, and diaphanous mousseline trapeze tops and skirts, much of it edged in horsehair ruffles so the pieces gently bobbed down the runway. Romance is the word that comes to mind.
Why the change of heart? Catherine Holstein said it started with a martini at the Gritti Palace in Venice. She and her husband Griffin Frazen, an architect who designs Khaite’s store and show sets, are besotted with the city and its mix of the old and the new. The moldings on the Gritti bar’s ceiling inspired the cameo-like cut-outs on the pastel lyocell shift that is the centerpiece of the collection. These photos are too moody and dark to see it clearly, but that dress is edged in hand-tatted lace with little creatures woven into the pattern.
“Sometimes I used to say we should be taking things away,” Holstein explained, “and now I was saying, ‘what can we add?’” She meant it down to the tiniest touches; Gerber’s bra was hand-finished with basting stitches, as were the corsetry details exposed underneath the undone fastenings of a wiggle dress.
Under the spotlights in the otherwise pitch black warehouse, the clothes had a hazy, dreamy quality. The Marisa Berenson in Barry Lyndon-by-way-of Gibson Girl up-dos some of the models wore only added to the feeling. But Khaite being one of New York fashion’s great commercial success stories, it’s worth considering what will translate on the store floors and out there in the much-less-magical-than-Venice real world. This observer is nominating the evening suits: the sheer little jackets and matching slim skirts with ruffled horsehair trim are a so-old-it’s-new-again idea. Does anyone really need another little black cocktail dress?
