Aiming to create a full-circle moment, Deveaux head designer Andrea Tsao chose the same location (Spring Studios) for the brand’s return to the runway after three years. This season also marked the relaunch of menswear, which is where the brand started when it was confounded by Taso and Matthew Breen back in 2015. (Womenswear debuted in 2018.) What hasn’t changed is the made in America label’s allegiance to New York, and to functional dressing.
This was addressed by the cargo theme that ran throughout the show. Tsao’s take on the omnipresent trend was to extend pockets past hems, making them flap. One pair of men’s pants had pockets that extended from either side of the waist that could be worn loose or snapped securely to the leg, a concept that was more complicated than it needed to be.
The designer’s translation of a workwear jumpsuit into a fitted and tailored full look that could work for the office or evening was inspired. Tsao is among the designers bringing the skirt suit back, at last. She also returned to the ripe-for-revival 2010s trend of layering a skirt or dress (in this case a slip style) over pants.
“This whole summer felt like a big revitalization in New York,” Tsao said, “so we really wanted to try and capture, in nine minutes of a show, what a summer in New York might feel like.” One way she recreated that happy, sunlit mood, and various ways of enjoying it, was by using a very literal water print. The blue-sky feeling was best captured in the palette, featuring various hues of turquoise, and by the amazing soundtrack that featured city sounds and songs about the Big Apple.
Tsao also expressed an upbeat attitude with an unexpected and extended offering of party dresses that were dressier and more conventionally feminine than Deveaux has ever been, in a crinkle fabric in vibrant hues as well as black and white. Some of these had peplums, and a few were accessorized with tulle gloves, which gave them a dated air, but then Tsao said she was thinking of summertime in the city “through the decades, not necessarily present day.”
This collection might have been better served by a different format. The sterility of the show space stood in contrast to Deveaux’s made-for-action designs and the hustle-bustle of city life, which kept on keeping on as the models circled the space.
