The action in New York Fashion Week was concentrated in Brooklyn on Monday with distinctive and distinguished shows by Tory Burch and Diotima, after the day had opened with Zankov in Chelsea.

Tory Burch: Fashion in a cathedral of finance

No one can ever fault Tory Burch’s excellent sensibility when it comes to staging a show, especially this season, when she presented inside the luxury condominium skyscraper One Hanson Place.

Originally the HQ of Williamsburg Savings Bank, the main lobby in this former cathedral of finance built in the 1930s contains elements of Romanesque ad Byzantine architecture. Making it the ideal location for this eclectic collection, which blended snappy American sportswear, distressed fabrics and kicky imperfections.
 
Though diverse in its references, the collection was nevertheless coherent its fashion statement and target. Few creators today better understand the needs of busy working women than Burch. Her clothes have polish but are never prim.
 

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She takes risks – like a great series of dropped waist skirts and dresses – but manages to pull them off with aplomb. She creates monogram silk sweaters but keeps them playful with myriad letterings. She drapes plissé flared dresses in liquid viscose with gusto.
 
Tory’s aesthetic is cool, cerebral and feminine, but never saccharine or insipid. Her cast looked like busy women brimming with panache armed with a great new Lee Radziwill handbag – each marching with supreme confidence.
 
Little wonder her front-row boasted Naomi Watts, Qin Lan, Tessa Thompson and Emma Roberts.
 
“We were thinking about the complexity of women and different facets of their style. Femininity and strength, precision and imperfection. The clash of pristine tailoring with naïve florals, seed beading with distressed leather,” opined Burch, who took a bow with a huge smile, the sounds of loud clapping echoing off the gilded mosaic ceiling.
 

Diotima: Rejecting colonialism through Carnival

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Colonialism, and Caribbean culture’s fightback against that evil via the tradition of Carnival, was the theme of an innovative and intriguing collection from Diotima this season.
 
Yet though riffing on carnival archetypes, the collection was far from being clothes for a pageant. Diotima’s founder Rachel Scott referenced many carnival characters – with names like Baby Doll, Dame Lorraine – but the results were very wearable, cool clothes rather than theatrical statements.
 
Blending elements of active sport and couture: like a hooded sleeveless mesh top and pants finished by a layered skirt in shards of chiffon; or mini waistcoats accompanied by matte viscose crepe knit skirts. Her chevron-finished sequinned mesh bodies will have a huge impact and be copied by lesser talents and high street stores.
 
Scott can drape and sculpt with the best of them, her skill highlighted in some fab crepe lapel-free redingotes, layered asymmetrically below the waist. 
 
Combining all her tricks and techniques into a super series of evening looks, they were worn by a cast with J’Ouvert pre-dawn street festival make-up with daubs of silver mud. That was before a bravura finale of feathery gowns with interior light weight petticoats.
 
Carnival couture received an enormous cheer when Scott took her bow inside a battered old warehouse in Greenpoint.
 
Last year’s winner of the CFDA’s 2024 American Womenswear Designer Award, Scott was recently appointed creative director of Proenza Schouler. In a word, Jamaica-born Scott is also the single most original fashion designer in the Americas today. 
 

Zankov: Knits and stripes in Chelsea

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Monday began with a runway debut for Henry Zankov, whose knitwear-driven collections have been attracting a lot of attention of late.
 
Zankov is another recent prizewinner, nabbing the Google Shopping Emerging Designer of the Year title in 2024.
 
So, even though this was Zankov’s catwalks baptism, the show managed to attract buyers from Neiman Marcus, Harrods, Selfridges, Bergdorf and Sherri McMullen, whose chain of boutiques around San Francisco have earned her a reputation as a savvy diviner of coming trends.
 
Presented inside an all-white art gallery in Chelsea to an audience of barely 150, the collection was pretty and pleasing, even if the show never took off.
 
Boasting some eye-boggling fabrics – bonded burlap linens or wrinkled checkerboard intarsias – Zankov’s clothes look novel, though also oddly retro. With too many football jersey carwash stripes, and predictable sequin mesh sheaths. Plus, styling that featured headscarves and daffy sunglasses only managed to remind one of Alessandro Michele’s early Gucci shows a half decade ago. Not exactly a very now look.