http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/13/fashion/dkny-dao-yi-chow-maxwell-osborne-new-york-fashion-week.html 2016-09-13 21:24:25 When Dressing the Future Means Skipping the Present The new DKNY collection by Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne made a striking visual picture, though you’re not likely to wear it to the office. === The lights projecting gridlike patterns along the High Line were digital-monitor green, and smoke was pumping out over the walkway. On the soundtrack, a piano was crashing out a melody; soon, an electronic thump took its place. It was 9 p.m., in the 12th hour of the sixth day of The setting, said the explanation accompanying Dao-Yi Chow and Maxwell Osborne’s new DKNY show, was “Neo SoHo.” (The part of Neo SoHo was played by Chelsea.) You can imagine such a place: a Wi-Fi wonderland that counts your steps and reorders your groceries. Every Starbucks takes Bitcoin, and every store is a Starbucks. Mr. Chow and Mr. Osborne, who were appointed to DKNY in April 2015, took a modishly dystopian view, one that seemed to be the theme of the night. ( DKNY’s tailored jacket of old — clothes for workingwomen — had been cinched and stiffened into a kind of sexy, robotic carapace. (No need for a shirt.) Cotton sweaters dangled sleeves that extended long past the models’ hands, as the current styling trend dictates. (No need for a hand.) Military-style parkas with pockets for essentials or munitions — the wearer’s choice — were made in tulle. “In the future, what will define New York style?” Mr. Chow and Mr. Osborne asked. “People talk a lot about our city’s past, but we like to think about what’s next.” Their outlook is bleak but tough, and their clothes looked ready for some soon-arriving war in the streets. The collection made for a striking visual picture, which is no doubt the point, especially at the finale, when the entire band of models returned in low-cut hooded onesies, moon-boot sneakers and bras. Instagram will eat it up; magazine stylists may, too. But it was also why even what looked cool left me cold. In their rush to the future, Mr. Chow and Mr. Osborne are neglecting the present, when real women may want clothes to take them through their real lives. At DKNY’s height, this was its specialty: streetwear not in the contemporary sense of aggressive, subculture-siphoning casual clothes, but in the sense of clothes to be worn every day on the streets, from work to play, without occasion or undue fuss. The new DKNY is moving farther and farther from that, at least as it appears on the runway. Only Bella Hadid, the nascent supermodel, gets to wear a look like she wore on the DKNY runway to the office. It’s hard to fault Mr. Chow and Mr. Osborne for this, exactly. They were The near-obsession at New York Fashion Week with what’s next, and how to get to it faster, goes far beyond the DKNY designers. It has colored every part of the process, the design of clothes to their delivery. (The fledgling buy-now movement conspires to send clothes racing directly off the runway into stores.) But that emphasis on novelty often seems to come at the expense of functional design, in all its unsexy minutiae. The future may be fast approaching, but who is designing clothes for today? What’s next for DKNY, and Mr. Chow and Mr. Osborne there, is also an unanswered question. In July, LVMH, in a rare instance of unloading one of its brands,