Bold Maybe-Workwear Glitz at the Michael Kors Spring Show | Fashion

One of the few bigwigs to leave New York for European Fashion Week, Michael Kors can always be counted on for glitzy, leisure-class womenswear straight from the pages of Condé Nast. Or as Kors puts it: “Clothes for women who love to be noticed”.

He put his money where his mouth was on Wednesday morning in a glass warehouse filled with palm fronds in midtown Manhattan. His spring show opened with a white Halston-style silk dress worn by Scarface star Michelle Pfeiffer’s character Elvira Hancock — with a plunging neckline and natty-set tit-ties. As evidenced by the history of film costumes, the legacy of the suit was not only palpable, but impossible to ignore.

If Kors is selling an impossible (and outdated) fantasy of what women want to wear, the star-studded front row — including Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour — includes tennis champion Serena Williams and Academy Award-winning actress Anne Hathaway. Dressed old and present course – suggests that this is a fantasy that some women are still following.

As for the spring collection, the idea was to bring “the resort to the city and the city to the resort,” Kors explained. “London is full of people wearing flip-flops to work rather than the beach. What we wear on vacation is what we wear in the city. In the Kors world, that means women arriving at the office wearing sparkly floral-print kaftans, both on private jets and school runs, and carrying their phones and keys in youthful bags.

In fact, the collection was probably more suitable for a curvy body shape – and the beach than the conference. Mini sarongs were tied to become mini skirts, wide-legged pants with red, black and pink belts up to the hips and soft silk skirts open at the navel. They wore sequin dresses paired with solid sequin tops (in gold, of course) and bra-tops, well, on top, a little sparkle here and a clavicle there.

Still, there was a difference between the peekaboo top and the fringes, Kors reintroduced the famous cashmere shmoo that looks like a jumper but is a scarf or belt. Designed to roll over the shoulders, it was used to solve sexual air-con issues in offices, Kors said, “it’s always too cold.” This shmoo came in red.

It was an attempt to address the more meaty issues of packing for your holiday. Michael Kors Savings Answer? “Buy something that will last 20 years,” he said. “The best way to be sustainable is to not buy things you only wear once. I’m not trying to be mean to H&M, but that’s the problem.”

And the thick socks and sweatpants we’ve all started wearing at home? “all right!” he said. “America invented comfort! But I mean tracksuits? No, no.”

New York Fashion Week was big on high-octane glamour, and understandably so – the much-discussed return to normalcy is not where it is in the UK, and compulsory mask-wearing was only dropped on the subway a week ago. After two years of wondering about the pandemic, Kors thinks it’s time to move on: “People should be happy today.”