Cathy Horyn Explains Why Resort Season Is So Great

A resort look by Oscar de la Renta that Horyn enjoyed. Photo: Courtesy of Oscar de la Renta

This resort season has been beefier than ever before — and not just because at a resort show, you are more likely to get fed, and tipsy if you're lucky. Designers from Europe, like Stella McCartney and Lanvin's Alber Elbaz, flew to New York to delight editors with their presentations. Plenty of New York designers, like Oscar de la Renta and Jason Wu, put on full shows. Elle editor Robbie Myers doesn't like all this. She told us that having to get out of her office and transport herself to shows was keeping her from working on her September issue! (Time taken out of her day to film The City is presumably less of a nuisance.) Indeed, aren't two exhaustive seasons a year enough? Now designers are making everyone do a third that is seriously dragged out, like sleepaway camp? Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn seems to be enjoying the season a lot, in large part because it represents a time when fashion is much less snobby than it usually is.

Horyn points out that while the resort clothes used to be for richies who could afford to escape to Bali in the middle of winter, they're now also conceived for people who can't afford to take vacations. Designers have to do this to fully capitalize on the season and win the money of both those who vacation in designer clothes and those who choose designer clothes over vacation.

Many designers are also perfectly comfortable riffing off their last collections, rather than coming up with something mind-blowingly new, which Horyn appreciates.

Depending on your perspective, resort collections can have either things you’re bored seeing or gems you can’t seem to find anymore because everybody’s become such big shots that they can’t do straightforward things.

But then on the other hand, after keeping resort low-key, they probably feel like they owe the world something super-weird on the runway in September. And everyone knows the point of being famous for anything is to have a license to be totally weird.

A Winter Break Is Now the Longest Season in Fashion [NYT]