It’s 5:00pm on a particularly dreary Saturday in New York, but you wouldn’t know that from the energy buzzing in Gallery I at TriBeCa’s Spring Studios. Christopher John Rogers, the 26-year-old designer who just won the prestigious CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund Award in November, starts his Fall/Winter 2020 ready-to-wear show in a half hour or so, and there’s a palpable sense of anticipation for what we’re all about to witness. After all, with the recent departure of big name designers like Jeremy Scott, Telfar, and Pyer Moss from the CFDA New York Fashion Week calendar, Rogers has easily risen to the top of the heap as one of the most anticipated shows of the season.
I speak to Rogers backstage after the show, and his professed inspiration for the collection surprises me: “Garbage bags, trash bags, carryout bags, electrical tape on the street, debris, etcetera.” Initially, I had trouble connecting that inspiration with what ultimately ended up on the runway, as the stunning clothes were anything but trashy. Instead, they were the epitome of glamour, the kinds of garments you can imagine celebrities immediately calling their stylists to be dressed in. (And Rogers is no stranger to dressing celebrities. In the past few months alone, he’s dressed everyone from Gabrielle Union to Rowan Blanchard to Lil Nas X.) The more I thought about it, the more it started to make sense: the silhouettes were big; dresses came in crinkled fabrics and artfully draped the body, like a periwinkle top with sleeves that ballooned around the arm or an iridescent gown that gathered at the waist. I understood the inspiration even more when Rogers also cited the work of Alexander Barton, a visual artist who has made a career out of turning debris into art. Suddenly, it all became clear: Rogers had turned trash to treasure.
And what a treasure it was. Though he experienced some difficulties while designing the collection — “A lot of the muslins for these looks came back from the factory completely fucked up. It was a mess,” he told me — you would be hard-pressed to figure as much. At several moments, there were even garments that literally dazzled on the runway. Through a partnership with Swarovski, Rogers had accented a number of items — a strapless gown, a shirt-and-pant set, a dress — with glistening precious crystals. It brought an added dose of high-end allure to his collection, something Rogers was enjoyably playful about. When I mentioned that his CFDA win had clearly shot certain elements of his clothes into a new stratosphere, he yelled back, “Exactly!” while stifling some laughter. “The coins!”
