You may have been wondering the same thing we have: What’s with all the neon!? Highlighter colors are everywhere, and they were no more exuberantly displayed than at Michael Kors, where flashes of bright yellow, orange, and pink popped up amid many tight black dresses.
Backstage, Kors explained, “Listen, I don’t know if nature-inspired florals are a really urban thing. So when you think about fall color in New York — and this is really my homage to New York; it’s a very New York show — you think of neon. I love just the pop of neon with all these neutrals.” Kors admitted to having spent many a long night at Area and Palladium back in the day, but denied that he was channeling the eighties head-on. “Nothing comes back the same way twice,” he said. “I think certainly there’s a woman and a man here who’s strong. There’s a power to it. Is it the eighties power suit with the bow blouse and, you know, sneakers and commuting to work? No. But if we can inspire people to have more confidence, that’s important. So there’s nothing romantic about these clothes.” But if the clothes weren’t Working Girl, they weren’t Grace Jones, either. “How do you have that kind of power and decadence but still be appropriate for an adult to be able to go to work,” he asked, “because I don’t know a lot of people who live a full club life now. It’s the mix of all of it that makes it interesting to me, rather than saying we’re doing club life.”
André Leon Talley thought Kors had perfectly channeled the season’s big trend of “Easter-egg color.” “It is the eighties,” he said. “Gloria von Thurn and Taxis, Mud Club.” Not that he would know: “I didn’t go to clubs in the eighties. I partied in the sixties and seventies at Studio 54. I didn’t go to the Mud Club.”
Robert Verdi, also standing backstage, saw a trend he could embrace. “What’s interesting to me,” he said, “is it’s very luxurious. Like here at Michael you’re seeing this cashmere neon, which I love. It actually makes me want to wear it. I saw Michael Hunt, who works with Michael, wearing a hot-pink cashmere scarf, and I thought, ‘Oh, I’m already so gay, but that would really up my game.’ Imagine! I would be more gay. I’d be gay-squared. I’d be gay to the third power.”
Related: The Day-Glo Look is Here To Stay
