Style & Fashion

Downtown, just before Tom Ford’s show, and always with wit, invention, and fun, Greta Constantine is a consistent joy and really, for this writer, the true start of Fashion Week.

The label, a coming-together of names belonging to much-loved relations of designers Kirk Pickersgill and Stephen Wong, can cause confusion. Backstage, Pickersgill told The Daily Beast that he loved to eavesdrop on guests who ask each other, “Have you seen Greta? Is she here?” It’s even stranger to hear people claiming to have seen her, as she doesn’t exist.

The designers, based in Toronto, were inspired this season by, as ever, partying. The wine (and cheese and grapes) flowed freely before guests even got to checking out the models in an adjoining room of a warehouse-type space.

Once there, the models sauntered and chatted and laughed with one another—and, just as with every Greta Constantine show, there wasn’t a crush. Everybody could take pictures. There was chatting and laughter. The show had none of the static posing and seating stratifications of other more conventional shows.

The men told The Daily Beast that, while their wonderful clothes were still informed by a max-volume, shiny 1980s aesthetic, this season’s collection featured no flesh. They had been inspired by clothes that covered the body. Sure, as you can see in the pictures, there is glitter, padding, and outrageousness, but this time, no flesh—but rather, they said, a delight in working with materials like wool and silks and diamanté, while sculpting the materials into such incredibly varied shapes. The results showcase the men’s inventive artistry.

Pickersgill and Wong said the woman they were designing for was always out, having a great time, and enjoying the life of whatever room she found herself in—where she would also, inevitably, be the focus.