A parade of shaggy, sculptural knits; blossoming, balloon-like silhouettes, and a rainbow of super-oversize sweater dresses, all striding down the runway on a Saturday night in Brooklyn? Sounds like a Christopher John Rogers show.
For the label’s resort 2024 collection, Rogers brought the industry together just days before the 2023 Met Gala to showcase the strong shapes that have given the brand its signature wit and personality. “Our show has always felt celebratory, and there’s a lot of energy there from both a logistical and an emotional standpoint,” Rogers told me from his Uber ride to the venue in the lead-up to the show—the label’s first live runway presentation since showing in the same venue last June. “I was trying to be as honest as possible this season,” Rogers said. “I didn’t feel any pressure from outside sources, the industry, customers or even myself, to prove anything. I was just like, ‘How am I feeling now?’ Honesty, authenticity, and sincerity are my key themes, if anything.”
That ethos is part of what has made Christopher John Rogers’s body of work so exciting ever since he started the brand in 2016, then released his debut collection in fall 2018. For the past few seasons, Rogers has showed off schedule; he frequently eschews trends in favor of the household codes he’s built and expanded upon—a real rarity for such a young New York brand. His presentation never feel tired, nor typical. One thing is clear: Rogers has a voice, and he does things his own way.
Resort 2024 dived deeper into some of the fantastical, playful elements we’ve seen in the designer’s past collections—this time, expanding on them to evoke the masterful feeling of joy that’s practically a Rogers signature at this point. Take the trash bag motif, for example, which served as inspiration for puffy,…
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