Clothes at New York fashion week show were as familiar and comforting as staging was unsettling and bewildering
Marc Jacobs was scheduled to close New York fashion week with a catwalk show, but he closed it with a party instead. So riotous was his 15-minute Technicolor circus of punk ballet and Mrs Maisel-esque tailoring that when the pop star Miley Cyrus made a cameo appearance, strutting in a black bra top while trailing a zebra-striped coat along the catwalk behind her, many in the audience didn’t even notice.
Park Avenue Armory, a cavernous cube of 55,000 sq ft, was bare and dim when the event began. The audience were directed to seats at a tight cluster of rackety metal cafe tables in the centre of the room, surrounded by empty darkness on all sides. The only light came from the tealight candles in jam jars on the tables, as if at a late night jazz speakeasy.
Suddenly a platinum blonde pixie in a black tunic and tights appeared, kicked and twirled savagely through the tables, and promptly disappeared: Karole Armitage, the 65-year-old avant-garde dancer and choreographer known as the “punk ballerina” when she rose to fame in the 1980s.