The Isamu Noguchi Sunken Garden in Lower Manhattan was designed by the American artist to evoke the Ryoan-ji Temple in Kyoto, Japan, which is home to the world’s most famous Zen rock garden. Designed to draw the eye downwards – the circular garden sits below ground in the shadow of the 60-storey Skidmore, Owings & Merrill-designed Chase Tower – it’s populated with seven basalt stones taken from the riverbed of Japan’s Uji River. One of his major works in the city, he designed it – like the rock garden of Ryoan-ji – to be viewed at a remove through its glass windows; a place of quiet contemplation amid the surrounding energy of New York’s Financial District.
For Tory Burch, who selected the space as the venue for her S/S 2027 show yesterday evening, the garden provided a counterpoint for a collection which she described as unapologetically ‘more is more’. Seemingly in no mood for quiet contemplation, she posited the vivacious spring collection as one which celebrated the ‘joy of dressing’ up through the kind of eclectic combinations of colour and texture that have defined this edition of New York Fashion Week so far (a similarly liberated approach was seen at Ralph Lauren, Diane von Furstenberg and Proenza Schouler).
‘I was thinking about how people want to feel joy and optimism right now, that you still need to dream,’ she said backstage after the show. ‘Everything feels quite dystopian, so I was thinking about how do you dream, and how do you escape? You can do that through self-expression.’
It led to pieces which captured what Burch called an ‘opulent femininity’, a mood of richness largely achieved through the collection’s fabrications, a focus of the designer since she stepped down as CEO of the eponymous label in 2019 to dedicate all of her time to the creative side of the role (the time since has been deemed as the ‘Torynaissance’ due to bolder creative decisions and a slew of viral accessories, particularly with Gen-Z). ‘Granny cardigans’ (Burch’s personal favourite garment from the collection) were richly embroidered; jacquards recalled lavish fabric wallpapers; while handpainted silk ‘feathers’ became boas and pom-poms. Accessories included pumps in woven leather which splayed open at their front, shark tooth earrings, embroidered handbags and high-shine chain-link belts.
Colour was similarly eclectic: for the palette, which recalled heady 1970s decor, Burch had tasked her team with finding unusual colours and combinations ‘which weren’t just easily available’. One green ‘was impossible to name… we still haven’t come up with a name for it as a team.’ ‘I started this collection with colours,’ she said. ‘I really want it to have depth.’ Lightness was also important: heavy knits were actually made from chenille, a fluffy yarn which is much lighter than wool. More utilitarian elements also featured, like a series of military-style overcoats, trenches and blazers, some featuring delicate beading or crafted from Burch’s take on classic menswear tailoring wools.
It was, she said, the way she envisaged women dressing today: a riposte to perfectly matching outfits and the conventionally tasteful. ‘I think we all have to manage through difficult times and look for bright spots,’ she said. ‘I think self-expression is one of the ways to do that.’
Stay tuned to wallpaper.com for more from New York Fashion Week S/S 2027.
