admin Ah, waiting. We do lots of it during Fashion Week and beyond. Waiting for shows to start, for reviews to be published. We wait for our loved ones to come home, for our friends to text back. We wait for food at restaurants and for our laundry to dry. We wait for our next birthdays and for time to heal our wounds. Waiting is a part of living. It can induce anxiety or bring a strange kind of comfort. It can thrill or deter us. It can be the impetus behind Connor McKnight’s latest collection.
“A lot of the times my collections follow these themes of the Black mundane,” said McKnight at a preview. “In the past they’ve been more concrete, things like family or the home, but this season I wanted to tackle something more emotional.” The designer remembers his grandfather once telling him that he only hit his stride when he was 66-years-old, and explained that he was content with this realization. “I have these same feelings of stagnation,” said McKnight, “of just waiting for something to happen.”
To illustrate this experience, McKnight grounded his lineup in formalwear. “I thought it could be interesting to dress people in the clothes they wear when they arrive rather than when they’re on the way,” he said. McKnight cuts a mighty fine suit and has a nuanced eye for proportion in menswear. His formalwear this season was considerate and modern. Even if he dressed up his assortment this time around and ventured past his usual focus of leisure wear, his choices were practical and thoughtful: His newest suit silhouette elongates the body in that classic ’90s cut (Helmut Lang is in the air this season, for obvious reasons). Hammered silk separates offered a breezy but still refined summer uniform, and details like McKnights signature gusseted pockets applied to leather separates or pleated vents in the back of crinkly nylon jackets added dimension to wardrobe classics. McKnight makes the kind of safety blanket clothes you’d wear both in the days when you don’t have it in you to dress up and when you have to be at your best.
The designer celebrated the opening of a new showroom and workspace downtown last night. While he’s been based in Brooklyn for some time now, the event timed to New York Fashion Week marked his formal arrival to the city as a designer. McKnight has been a subtle presence until now, was this moment what he’d been waiting for? Speaking broadly, he said that he’s taken some time during the course of his career to “figure things out” and let things play out on their own, but this season is different. “I feel like this is very much the strongest collection that I’ve done,” he said, emphasizing that it feels particularly mature. “Not to say that I’m arriving or anything, but it feels like things are coming together.” Either way; welcome, Connor.
