Griffin Frazen on conceiving the cinematic runway sets for New York label Khaite: ‘If people feel moved we’ve succeeded’

When New York-based label Khaite opened its first store on SoHo’s Mercer Street in 2023, it was a definitive statement of intent: sharing a city block with the OMA-designed ‘Prada Epicenter’ (arguably the most influential store interior of the past three decades), alongside close neighbours Marni, Alaïa and Balenciaga, the store’s prime location was symbolic of founder and creative director Catherine Holstein’s swift rise to prominence after starting Khaite in 2016 (in 2022, she was named womenswear designer of the year at the CFDA Awards; a year later she would sell an 80 per cent stake to equity investment firm Stripes for an estimated $150 million).

The store’s interiors, created in collaboration with her husband, architectural designer Griffin Frazen, were a reflection of the designer’s ambitious vision for Khaite: unfolding over 7,000 sq ft, the metal and grey plaster-clad space is evocative of a surreal bunker, more akin to walking onto a film set than a fashion store (cinema has long been an influence to Holstein’s work, with David Lynch being a perennial reference). At its centre is a dramatic shaft of light, illuminating a real tree beneath, designed to bloom across the changing seasons. Frazen describes the arresting design as ‘elemental’; it has provided the blueprint for Khaite’s other stores across the United States, the most recent of which opened on Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles earlier this week.

Born in Los Angeles, Frazen – who has previously created stage design for Solange Knowles and helped Brady Corbet imagine the fictional architectural masterpieces of László Toth in The Brutalist – also works with Holstein to conceive the scenography for her runway shows. Last season, he imagined a raised yellow runway in a perfect loop – a Lynchian take on the Yellow Brick Road – while earlier shows have taken place in a creeper-strewn basement of a New York apartment, on a high-gloss black runway whereby models emerged from pitch darkness, or inside the Park Avenue Armory, whereby a series of roving spotlights evoked the high-glamour runway shows of the 1990s.

‘[The collection and set] truly happen in parallel,’ Frazen tells Wallpaper*. ‘Cate and I work independently for a while, then sit down and test each other’s ideas – in the end, it’s almost like a Rorschach exercise. Cate is very visual, so I try not to show her half-ideas; when I do show something, it needs to communicate clearly. Two weeks before the show, when styling begins, that’s when the collection finally reveals itself as a cohesive body. By then, the set is in process, but we keep it porous enough to respond to what the clothes are saying.’

For Holstein’s S/S 2026 show, which was held in the hanger-like McCourt theatre at multifunctional arts space The Shed this past weekend (the Diller Scofidio + Renfro-designed building is part of the Hudson Yards development on New York’s west side), Frazen created perhaps his most ambitious show set yet – a black pool of water dotted with jagged ‘rocks’ and misted with steam, over which models walked via a series of angular runways. ‘An expansive pool of water, a landscape,’ is how Frazen describes the abstracted design, which some commentators likened to a series of floating glaciers.

The steam, which was generated from the pool of water, was a particular challenge: ‘Unlike conventional stage haze, water vapour has weight – it changes humidity, catches light differently, softens edges, and alters acoustics,’ Frazen says. ‘[We wanted] the topography [to be] deliberately fragmented, so the space reads differently from every seat and in every camera angle. It was exciting to work with different states of matter – water and vapour. [These] more immaterial set pieces [are] not usually available to architecture.’

Unlike other runway sets, which might evoke a particular thematic story, Frazen says he sees his role as to create ‘a context that allows the clothes to declare themselves’. For S/S 2026, Holstein had thought about the models ‘as distinct characters, so the set became an abstract site for those characters to inhabit. The models’ paths multiply and intersect, creating moments of near-collision and divergence. It’s the opposite of last season’s perfect circle, which was a single, legible object. Robert Wilson often described his theatre as a “time–space construction” – that’s how I think about these shows, [with] form, light, sound, and movement brought together.’

As opposed to creating a fashion store – a process which can unfold over several months – the creation of a show set is rapid, with fast-changing demands. ‘There’s very little room for prototyping, and when something shifts, you solve it in real time,’ he says. ‘Last season demanded a seamless, singular object; this time the sheer surface area and materials made that unrealistic, so we embraced a visible grid of components, which reinforced the idea of a broken landscape. We also had a very large shipment delayed in customs and pivoted to an alternate finish days before load-in.’

Frazen says that it is only at the show itself that you get the final picture: ‘[I want the audience not to be] spectators, but participants – on the same ground as the models, sharing the air, the sound, the moisture. I want it to be immersive and transporting. At its best, space carries emotional charge; if people feel moved – and if the environment amplifies the collection – then we’ve succeeded.’

As for why architecture has become so intrinsic to the Khaite universe, Frazen says it is all about ‘world-building – something that fashion is very good at’. ‘Space is an incredibly powerful branding tool,’ he continues. ‘Architecture turns ideas into reality – into a place you can occupy and remember. Fashion and architecture are both social art forms: they’re about materials and details but also about bodies and how we move through the world together.’

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