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The Great and God Awful Trends of New York Fashion Week Spring 2014

We took our time to really go through everything we saw at New York Fashion Week to compile for you the best, worst, and unavoidable trends that will be forced in front of your faces come spring 2014.

Marc by Marc Jacobs, Prabal Gurung, Philosophy, Alexander Wang, MM6, DKNY, Adam Selman

New York Fashion Week has been over for a little bit. Every season, we try to prepare our mind, body, and soul for it, only to find at the end of the week that our entire world has been flipped on its side and we have to scramble to piece our lives back together. It can take weeks to regain any level of normalcy—which is why our fashion week roundup is a little late this season. We also just wanted to take our time, sans hangover, to really go through everything we’d seen and bitterly browse through the shows we didn’t get invited to, to compile for you the best, worst, and unavoidable trends that will be forced in front of your faces come spring 2014.

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Get Naked

J. Mendel, Brandon Sun, Sophie Theallet, Michael Kors, Jeremy Laing, Philosophy, Milly, Lacoste

Of all the trends we saw for next year, the “sheer fabric/no bra/I actually paid money for this shirt so you can see my titties trend” is by far our #1 favorite. This isn’t necessarily a new thing, nearly every season someone tries to pull off this look and normally it goes unnoticed. But the number of labels that decided to go this route for spring is a little overwhelming. In fact, I didn’t even include all of them in our post because we kept getting everyone’s shows mixed up and got sick and tired of having to re-make our stupid little collage every time we found someone else made exactly the same barely-there item.

Boobs are great and all, but we can’t help but be a little concerned about this—like, why is everyone suddenly making items that leave nothing to the imagination? Is everyone secretly way sluttier than we thought? Are we so wasteful as a society that we’re now OK with spending tons of money on clothing that technically isn’t really clothing? Is global warming worsening at such a rapid rate that by next season we won’t even be able to survive unless our asses are hanging out? Are we about to die? ARE WE DYING IN 2014?!

Clueless Ralph Lauren

Ralph Lauren is one of those designers that’s been around, creating the exact same thing every season for so freakin’ long that we normally expect to be really unimpressed by his shows. His collections always seem to have some sickeningly romantic backstory to them. The kind that could be found in a trashy romance novel a neglected Upper East Side trophy wife would sit and cry over if her face wasn’t so frozen from all of the Botox and collagen she’s injected in order to “stay young” for her fat, ugly, cheater of a husband.

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However, after seeing the spring 2014 collection, we think she might need to find a new go-to designer. This season, the clothing Ralph made was for a much younger audience. Instead of throwing a bunch of berets on chicks clad in dusty rose equestrian pants with periwinkle detailing or whatever the hell he typically tries to push, it appears as that he finally realized he needed to knock that shit off. This time around he designed the collection of our wildest 90s childhood fantasies—the perfect Clueless-fangirl wardrobe. Mini skirts, knee-high socks, neckties, and neons. We can finally all dress like Cher and Dionne. We’ve only been waiting for this collection for like half our goddamn lives!

Dirty Hippies Anna Sui, Gypsy Sport, Elder Statesman

In case you were wondering, hippies are in now. At least that’s the verdict we received this fashion week after viewing collections like Anna Sui, Donna Karan, Gypsy Sport, and the Elder Statesman. This is definitely not a look we support. It’s lazy. The 60s really weren’t that long ago, our parents still wear this crap, and it’s a little “meh.” In fact we’d support any other time period in fashion over this. We can get down with some Victorian vibes, girdles, monocles, cone bras, foot binding, anything but this please for the love of God!

But we want to make a big shout out to the Elder Statesmen for at least nailing it on the casting. We had to do a double take when we saw the guy they decided to use for their presentation. It's always great to see celebrity casting for runway shows, but how they landed Jesus H. Christ of Nazareth Modeling Agency for their spring 2014 presentation, we'll never know.

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Mars Attacks

Jeremy Scott

“Aliens, Flock of Seagulls hair, Flintstones, B-52’s music videos, Nicolas Cage in Valley Girl. Go! Fuck everyone if they don’t like it.” This is what we like to imagine Jeremy Scott said to his design team at his pre-production meeting for spring 2014. He’s one of the only designers who never fails to excite us each fashion week—in fact his is the only show we ever actually want to go to. Jeremy definitely has some big balls, and season after season he miraculously manages to create garments even more insane and generally unbearable for the average Joe than the last. But that’s why everyone loves him. In an industry where most designers try to play it safe and manufacture designs that can be worn by the masses, he’s the guy we admire most because you can tell he just doesn’t give a shit about what anyone else thinks. That monster collection did kind of suck though, sorry! Still… Respect!

Blue Jeans Rachel Zoe, Jen Kao, Creatures of Comfort, Jill Stuart, DKNY, L.A.M.B.

Denim is never a bad idea. It’s literally the safest direction any designer can go in. You’re never going to hear a critic go “Those jeans were fucking disgusting! They ruined the whole collection!” It’s literally impossible for anyone to hate on denim because it can be worn by anyone, it goes with everything, and it’s never going to go out of style. So it was no surprise that this season we saw a lot of it on the runway in the form of dresses, button downs, jackets, vests, and even some onesies we weren’t completely mad at. However DKNY’s use of denim was kind of questionable. It’s really hard to see a pair of denim overalls without remembering the good ol’ days rockin’ OshKosh B’gosh while trying to force the new kid at the park to eat the “mystery rocks” we found laying at the bottom of the sandbox. Apparently some guys are really into that whole hot "girl who dresses like an overgrown baby" thing these days, so maybe we’re wrong. Still kind of pervy though.

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Wild at Heart Rodarte

We don’t have a very good track record with Rodarte. We’ve said some not so nice things about their pretty dresses in the past. But we’d like to make peace with them finally because for once we actually love one of their collection! Let’s shake hands and put the bad vibes behind us—we want to be your best friend. Maybe we’re just psychos and have some creepy obsession with Nicolas Cage that causes us to compare everything we see on the runway to characters in his films. But we know we’re not crazy here by saying this collection screams Sailor Ripley and Lula Fortune in Wild at Heart. Literally everything from the fringed leather and the animal prints to the wide pointed blazer collars and snakeskin ankle boots is pure perfection. We want to put on everything in this collection, drive out to the middle of the desert in a convertible, and start pit-kicking the shit out of some dirt. Kate and Laura Mulleavey, you’re both invited to come with.

Work It Out Jeremy Laing, Marc by Marc Jacobs, Louise Goldin, Assembly, T by Alexander Wang

Gym anxiety is a very real thing. Do you wear your regular clothes to the gym and then get naked in front of a bunch of nasty out of shape creeps? Do you change at work and risk having all your co-workers seeing what your butt really looks like in yoga pants? What if you just wear your regular clothing to the gym—are they going to judge you because you’re dressed like an idiot in your lame plebian attire? What should you wear to work out? Is it safe to Soul Cycle on Xanex?

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These are many of the thoughts that go through people’s heads when that pre “I can’t believe I’m doing this” gym fear sets in. Perhaps some of these retarded issues can be dealt with now due to the abundance of sports inspired gear we’ll have available to us early next year. You can wear your T by Alexander Wang to the gym, work out in your Marc by Marc Jacobs, and then put on your Assembly dress to go for drinks post-sweat. If you’re like most normal human beings and don’t go to the gym but don’t want people to judge you, wearing any of the aforementioned designers probably will help you to weave a semi-believable web of sad little lies.

Shiny Everything Diane Von Furstenberg, Zimmerman, Zero Maria Cornejo, Ralph Rucci, Reem Acra, Richard Chai Love

It’s a fact, all women are like cats. They see something shiny and they collectively lose their shit. No matter what a garment looks like, when it’s walking down the runway hanging off a 6-foot Amazonian chick, even in the most hideous of lighting set ups, every girl in the room is going to freak the F out. They’re going to gasp, smack their hand over their chest in disbelief, turn to the first chick they see next to them, whether they are a total stranger or a mortal enemy, and they’re going to say “OMG. I want that!” They’ll giggle and chit chat for a few seconds about how chic it is, scribble some notes on their little Kate Spade notepad, take pictures with their huge fucking iPad, and that’s it. The show ends, the 30-second friendship is over, and everyone goes back to being a dick. Next show…

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Slacker Chic Theory, Band of Outsiders, Gypsy Sport, Karen Walker, Mark McNairy

There were a number of designers this season who decided to go the casual route. They made the kind of clothing you can relax in, attire befitting of a Saturday morning hangover chill session. The kind of hangs where you roll out of bed, smoke a bowl, watch a Pixar movie, walk to the deli to get a burrito, then venture back to your couch to do it all over again. We’re not saying designers like Theory, Band of Outsiders, Gypsy Sport, Karen Walker, or Mark McNairy are a bunch of slackers or even partake in such soul crushing activities on the weekend. But they definitely know a thing or two about comfort and looking cool without any effort.

WTF Thom Browne

This seasons “WTF?” award goes to Thom Browne. He’s come a long way from his first collection. Forget skinny suits with cropped pants, the man is capable of a heck of a lot more than most people give him credit. This past summer he astounded critics at his menswear presentation, which featured male models dressed as manic cross dressing Nazi toy soldiers. Now for his women’s line he decided to keep things just as bizarre by incorporating the same military theme and mixing it in with Elizabethan silhouettes on models who look like they just walked out of a shock ward. It was kind of terrifying but in a really good way. The gowns were beautifully crafted. Although—like most of Alexander McQueen’s designs—there will probably never be an appropriate time or place for you to wear this shit, we still can appreciate the hard work that went into it.

More fashion from VICE:

On the Street at New York Fashion Week

NYFW Reviews: Opening Ceremony Made Us Bust a Nut

Return to New Zealand Fashion Week