This season for this young designer is a hopeful look at fashion and the future
A foot out the door, that’s where we’re at. Half determined to stay cocooned in safety, the other half raring to take on the world, ready or not.
“It” designer Chris Nick’s fall ’21 collection is a reflection of this sensibility, at once moving forward and moving back with a nod to the Y2K “it” girl, decked in the assurances of the past we have so decidedly survived but also with the boldness it takes to face up to the future.
“As we all slowly get back up on our feet and the world starts to have a sense of normality again, it’s time to rekindle and relight the fire,” says the young designer, pointing out shades of bold red that, along with graphic white, stand dauntless against black that seems to be a signature in his every collection. “I am known to have an obsession with wardrobe staples, but this season, I decided to add bright red and stark white into the mix,” Chris beams.
His fall ’21 pieces are relatively simple in cut, but not in impact, harking back to the wild glamour of Studio 54 without tossing aside the prudence necessitated by the present. Although the trend to stay home will linger, the Chris Nick woman this season, as the designer puts it, “is itching to put on her finest and see the world again.”
And finest in terms of cut, color, cloth, and comfort means classic and current coming together in a single collection, if not in a single piece of it, such as a terno top that bares the midriff. The ruched Filipinianas are the key pieces in the fall collection that gives tradition a modern touch, modest yet sexy, hugging the feline figure in all the right places.
It’s time to rekindle and relight the fire. —Chris Nick
This way, elegance, too, gets some chutzpah, finding expression in silk mesh, silk jersey, French twill, and heavy French crepes. “The elegance of the now,” Chris calls it, to whom one can never go wrong with the classic appeal, as long as one brings along some attitude with it into the room.
Daring is the word by which the designer describes the Chris Nick woman of fall ’21. “Daring and sensual and fun,” he says. “A woman exploring the power and the will to claim life back after such a trying period in our lives.”
Yes, we’re back or slowly getting there, but it’s a changed world, where caution is in style.
And that is why the Chris Nick fall ’21 collection is a hopeful look at both fashion and the future, eye on the light at the end of the tunnel, but already, through the darkness of the tunnel, celebrating it with glamour and flashing lights, tripping the light fantastic to Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” as they did back at Studio 54 or whatever song we have right now that we can dance to with wild abandon, if only it were OK to be in a crowd again.