Christopher John Rogers (Q2776)
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Christopher John Rogers is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Christopher John Rogers |
Christopher John Rogers is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Like his fellow Americans Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Christopher John Rogers is working a season ahead of his peers. He made a surprise visit to Paris this week to show his pre-fall 2024 collection, while the rest of fashion (barring The Row designers) was still thinking about spring.Rogers has found that showing on the pre-season schedule can help sales. Moving appointments up by another couple of months will presumably boost them further. But the trip was also about profile raising. With his one show a year taking place off-calendar in May, he’s not as well known to European editors and buyers as he is in the States.Those who know him know him first and foremost for his colorful stripes, but for the last two collections he’s opened with a series of all-white looks and he repeated the formula here. “I think it surprises people, and I like the cleanness of it,” he said. The all-white pieces also let him show off without any distractions. A fit-and-flare 1950s-ish dress with a bodice that exposed its inner construction, and a strapless dress with origami-like twists, bows, and ruffles were ample proof of what he said: “make and process—that’s what I love most about what I do.” Another strapless dress was constructed from a papery Japanese nylon that’s used in backpacking, “so you can go hiking in it,” he laughed.After eight or so looks, he reintroduced color. Adding circles to his repertoire, he created a graphic warp print that he used for a ruffle-sleeved shirt and balloon pants, and lifted a black-and-white print from the enamel tableware at one of his favorite neighborhood places, the Smile To-Go in Soho, for both easy-wearing pants and a deeply ruffled shirtdress. The single rose print on a silk viscose number came from a 1930s wallpaper pattern.Stripes are still the thing here though, and the variety demonstrated his range—he’s the rare young designer who has both commercial knack (see the fine gauge knits with striped details) and dramatic flair (as in a voluminous Cristóbal-ish trapeze). A strapless cotton dress with variegated stripes, some of which were crushed and ruched, was the collection standout because it connected both of those instincts.
3 October 2023
It was June last year when Christopher John Rogers made a big splash with his once-a-year fashion show. This time, he bumped it up to the last Saturday in April, capitalizing on the hoopla that surrounds the Met Gala. The Brooklyn Navy Yard venue was the first stop in a long night of fashion events that included his own after-party at the Standard Hotel and a Gucci shindig with an Idris Elba DJ set. Quinta Brunson, Teyana Taylor, and Ashley Graham were all in the audience wearing his clothes, and designer friends like Hillary Taymour and Willie Norris turned up to support.Rogers has emerged from the pandemic at the top of New York’s young generation of designers. In his rainbow stripes and grids of colorful polka dots, he’s found strong, identifiable signatures, which is an important element of brand building that not all emerging talents understand or are capable of. The uptown, put-together polish of his clothes is another distinguishing factor. Many of his peers practice a scrappier, dirtier, more underground kind of fashion. He puts Viola Davis, Tessa Thompson, and Jodie Turner-Smith in red carpet gowns.So why on a call in the lead-up to the show did Rogers express a bit of disillusionment with the job of fashion designer? Not enough time in the design studio, he said. “I love being with a model and draping, or doing research, or really thinking about fit, about fabric, about texture, but I feel like only 10 to 15% of what I do is making clothes,” he explained. “In some ways this collection was informed by wanting to go back to that essential feeling.”The sleeveless top and ball skirt of the first look suggested a new direction. To start, they were all-white, and then there was the off-kilter, undone aspect of their construction, but they were red herrings. Rogers quickly found his way back to the bright color and unbridled exuberance that are his hallmarks. The graphic stripes he’s known for were joined by similarly bold florals in the vein of Warhol’s daisies; a pair of evening dresses in black-and-white polka dots of varying sizes and overlays, both of which are definitely red carpet-bound; and going-out tops constructed like oversize birthday present bows.Rogers does a good business with knits, many of which were seen in the audience last night. This season, he played with chunky yarns and thick, cozy layers, or fine gauges, though in both cases, he styled them to expose a flash of décoletté or midriff.
On the opposite end of the texture spectrum were an elegant fitted button-down and matching long skirt and a pantsuit in a shiny material he likened to Glad garbage bags. “It’s this really amazing fabric that’s actually coated taffeta,” he said. To finish, there was a group of black looks, including a panniered ball skirt and a draped top with the romance of the opening outfit.Success begets success, and as Rogers’s business grows he’ll face ever more pressures and responsibilities that keep him from the design studio. The industry can be uniquely hard on promising newcomers, putting them in a box at the same time we demand they grow and evolve. But if that draped top and ball skirt can tell us anything, it’s that Rogers is as committed to the dream of creation as ever.
30 April 2023
The opening images in this slideshow are likely to prompt some doubletakes. Christopher John Rogers, a designer for whom rainbow stripes are a defining signature, put together half a dozen looks for pre-fall devoid of color—as in zero ROYGBIV. The title he gave the collection, “It’s My Party and I’ll Cry if I Want to,” offers a hint about his new direction. Having captured the fashion world’s attention, Rogers seems to have set out to upend expectations.“What I’m after is autonomy, the ability to do what I want,” he said at an appointment in his lower Broadway studio. “The idea of play is paramount.” Cue the plastic clown noses and the towering silk clown hats created in collaboration with the milliner Piers Atkinson. There’s even a Pierrot jumpsuit in the first grouping, with silk flowers in place of the characteristic pompons, though this isn’t so much a novelty as it is a callback. A pre-pandemic runway show closed with a different take on the look.In the end, this wasn’t the volta face that those first looks augured. It’s just as colorful as any other CJR lineup, just as extroverted, but there is a commitment to pushing at the limits of his well-known signatures. In the studio, Rogers pointed out the porthole cutout in a boxy knit top bordered with the rainbow stripes—“it takes a lot of work to get it to lay flat,” he explained. Also complex: the sweaters that hybridized two crewnecks into one, and a sweater dress with both long sleeves and arm slits.The playfulness has a purpose; those knits can be worn in multiple ways. And the experimentation is balanced by an easy-wearing sensibility. Rogers’s new suits are oversized and unstructured; cut from recycled polyester in zesty shades of grape and crawfish, they’re the fresh, modern flipside of the more formal tailoring on his June runway.Rogers doesn’t want to get boxed into any one category, but evening wear, inevitably, is his calling card. With award season ramping up, there’s bound to be some incoming calls for the tulip gown in floral printed faille and a harlequin embroidered black column with pouf sleeves, both of which nod with flair back to mid-century couture shapes.
6 January 2023
Joy, pleasure, exuberance. As the world has turned back on post-pandemic, designers have strived to channel those sensations in their clothes. For Christopher John Rogers, all that seems to come quite naturally. He sprang down the runway last night, leaping and pirouetting and soaking up his standing ovation.This was Rogers’s first IRL show in over two years. A move to the pre-season schedule and the Omicron plot twist delayed his return until now, but he had quite the cheering squad for his comeback. Prabal Gurung, Victor Glemaud, Hillary Taymour, Peter Do, Raul Lopez, and the Oscar de la Renta designers all sat in the front row. Most of them have been back on the New York Fashion Week calendar since last September.So backstage after the show there was a feeling of making up for lost time. Rogers exchanged hugs, wiped away tears, and posed with what looked like all 55 of his models. Of his collection, he said, “I wanted to say that everything can exist together, everything makes sense if you will it to. I like the idea of multiplicity and that so many things through one specific scope can shine.”Karlie Kloss kicked things off in a purple coat, whose oversized, double-breasted proportions were extroverted in the extreme. Tailoring played a starring role, but Rogers is agnostic about silhouette. Single-breasted pantsuits exuding masculine swagger mixed with other more feminine shapes boasting dropped lapels, back gathers and drapes, and, in a couple of cases, pantaloons. He cut trenches in bold floral prints, whose colors were picked up in bright shearling dusters.Even without the benefit of runway shows Rogers has made some of the most clockable fashion of the last couple of years. That’s down to his extraordinary color sense and eye for graphic pattern, both of which were on ample display in this collection’s array of striped knits, which he juxtaposed in more-is-more fashion with checkerboard separates and/or tights.Another thing that designers have been talking about these days is ease. None of us, they’re convinced, are ready to give up the sartorial comforts we began to count on during Covid. Rogers might beg to differ. Sweater dresses and silk pjs aside, he’s not interested in easy. To put it another way: his clothes attract people for whom easy isn’t interesting.From start to finish, this show brought the drama, but there are a few special numbers worth mentioning.
Among them: a floral print 1930s-ish tea dress and a gown in madras plaid silk shantung. And here’s betting he’s already getting calls for the bustier dress with a sunflower yellow bodice and wide horizontal stripes of coral, fuchsia, and citrine circling its ball skirt.
8 June 2022
When it comes to fashion, Southerners do the most. The region’s style philosophy is about being immaculately turned out, and its belles often choose to embody an aesthetic where perfection and tradition are prioritized. Born and raised in Louisiana, Christopher John Rogers understands this concept implicitly, and for pre-fall he sought to explore what it means to push the limits of your look without straying too far from convention. To accomplish this, he thought back to his youth in Baton Rouge and how he put together outfits as a child. “If I was wearing a suit, there had to be a shirt and tie that matched,” Rogers explained. “If the shirt was forest green, I’d wear a coordinating jacquard tie or stripes, which was my way of showing that I had a point of view while still looking presentable.”Rogers’s color palette may be bright, but he can send subtle messages. Here he worked to rethink the staples of American sportswear, loading classic silhouettes with oversaturated colors and heavily detailed prints of the Ken Scott and Celia Birtwell variety. All the oomph allows for moments of grandeur—a multicolored ball gown with spin-painting patterns that would make Damien Hirst jealous—but the evening fare takes a back seat to the more versatile looks. Given the lengthy amount of time that pre-collections spend on the shelves, the season has taken on added importance. “Our preseasons are now our main seasons,” said Rogers. “So there is a lot of [focus] on this idea of comfort, being able to wear these clothes to more than just an event.”Broadening the scope of his designs allowed Rogers to play with some new categories, most notably outerwear. His playful takes on pragmatic pieces seemed destined for Instagram glory. Offered in transparent PVC with rainbow squiggles covering nearly every inch, his raincoat is a delightful finishing touch that will have people wishing for rain. Likewise, fluorescent hues and gradient stripes inject life into the most basic of basics, like shirtdresses and house gowns.Some of the collection’s energy can be attributed to the use of pastiche; the lineup wasn’t just a Southern homage or retro mashup. It was a mix of themes, eras, and muses united by Rogers’s affinity toward them. A quick perusal and you’ll see modish prints, flapper silhouettes, fringe, the exaggerated proportions of late-’50s couture, Yayoi Kusama–esque polka dots, and much more. “I started from such a visceral place,” he said.
“Instead of an overly prescriptive vision, I wanted it to feel like [I was] going through my closet and finding pieces that made sense to me and how I wanted to show myself to the world. Ultimately that’s what I’m trying to do—create tools for people so they can express themselves fully.”
17 December 2021
The idea that every collection needs a lofty inspiration source is passé, just ask Christopher John Rogers. The designer’s latest collection steers clear of the referential. No, Rogers hasn’t canceled his Netflix account, tossed out his books, or stopped looking at pictures, but the past didn’t inform his creative process. Instead, he wanted to evoke a feeling of optimism while avoiding the clichés associated with the term.“I wanted it to be visceral and come from my heart. I felt like we’ve developed so many house signatures we didn’t need to reference a specific era or themes. This was more about cutting clothes and providing people with opportunities to enjoy dressing up,” Rogers shared over Zoom. “Last year, as I was designing it, I thought if I’m only going to make one more collection, what would it look like? And the answer wasn’t informed by the past or what I thought buyers might want. I love fashion, and I’m a fan of fashion, so that came through in the clothes.”By focusing on enjoyment and reinventing customer favorites, Rogers was able to deep dive into several motifs. Sections of the collection were devoted to variations of punchy colors like slime green and tangerine orange, while rainbow prints with an optical illusion vibe made their way onto various separates. This gradual exploration of specific colors and patterns kept things playful. When you have multiple looks in similar shades, the little things become paramount, and Rogers went out of his way to make each piece feel special. He doesn’t just give you a sequined slip dress or puffer coat; he’ll throw geometric diamonds on the dress’s bustline line and make the outerwear a reversible cocoon with one side covered in a Dippin’ Dots-worthy circle print.Rogers wants his pieces to trigger an emotional response in those who wear them, one that challenges the ephemerality of fashion’s seasonal cycle. “We want these to be things our customers cherish, that they can wear and live in,” he says. “These aren’t pieces you wear once and forget; they’re meant to be treasured, clothes that can grow and evolve with you over time.”The focus on wearability and construction meant that some of the proportions here were subdued compared to what we’ve come to expect from the label. No one does extreme volume and color the way Rogers does, and it’s made him an eveningwear fixture for forward-thinking women.
While there were several red carpet-worthy looks—a technicolor paillette-covered dress with flapper flair and a ballgown with an artsy barbecue theme print were two standouts—this season daywear almost eclipsed the after-hours fare. Casual suits that mixed pinstripes and plaid, LBDs with hints of rainbow knit worked into their pleats, and sweater dresses with candy-hued stripes were lighthearted fun that managed to feel polished and grown-up. After a year in confinement that played out in shades of gray, reemergence demands office wear with oomph, and Rogers offered an example of how that might look.
21 May 2021
The pause provided by 2020’s COVID-19 stay-in-place orders led many designers to rethink how they’ve been doing business, but for Christopher John Rogers, all the hours spent indoors allowed him a moment to appreciate what’s been working. Since launching his brand in 2016, Rogers and his team have been working nonstop, moving quickly from inspiration to execution. The breakneck pace did little to impede their success—he’s fresh off a 2019 CFDA/VogueFashion Fund win—but Rogers appreciated the chance to reflect. “In the past, there wasn’t time to think aboutwhywe’re doing the things we’re doing,” he shared via Zoom. “Part of the reason why the collections have been so well-received is that they’ve been quite visceral in terms of the way they were conceived. [Our team] has been like, ‘This feels exciting, we enjoy this’ instead of investigating why. This time it has been nice to parse through the reasons I’m attracted to certain things and how that can serve where we want to take the brand.”The direction Rogers settled on focuses on joy and simplicity. After the bombast of his fall collection, Rogers stripped things down, designing not just for the A-list celebrities who’ve been drawn into his sphere, but the everyday people looking for a luxury mood booster. Color and embellishment were used to elevate closet staples into something that feels fantastical. A button-down shirt was upgraded with rainbow crystals, while white suiting received vibrant topstitching on cuffs and lapels. Away from the studio and unable to do some of the draping he’s become known for, Rogers took things old school and pulled out the Crayolas. “I was away for four months and couldn’t do anything physical with my hands, so I just bought crayons and color pencils and started scribbling like I was a kid,” says Rogers, who has a background in fine arts. “I wasn’t trying to create anything specific; I just wanted to have fun and express myself. It’s about getting back to the way children see the world through very simple shapes. They put energy on the page when they draw, so this was about simplifying and translating that energy into the clothes.”Tapping into the vitality of naive art doesn’t mean making clothes that feel juvenile. Rogers struck a balance between the more whimsical elements of the collection and the glitz that has put him on the speed dial of Hollywood’s top stylists.
Having mastered voluminous ball gowns, he gave slinkier fare a try with a sequin catsuit for body-conscious clients. The silks and satins were replaced with easier to wear cotton and taffeta fabrics, but the aesthetic shifts were slight. The Lady Gagas and Tracee Ellis Rosses of the world can breathe a sigh of relief; Rogers’s girl is still a glamour puss, but this time around, she’s also an everywoman. “It’s nice to know that all these different types of people with differing interests, body types, and personalities can find themselves within this aesthetic,” explains Rogers. “Ultimately, that’s the point.”
6 October 2020
Up until three weeks ago, Christopher John Rogers and his small, industrious team created precisely pleated skirts, dramatically tiered gowns, and Swarovski crystal-adorned suits, all rendered in bold colors, out of Rogers’s living room in his Bushwick, Brooklyn, apartment. After creating just three collections, Rogers received the CFDA/VogueFashion Fund award last year. With their newfound resources, Rogers and his crew have been able to get a proper studio in Soho, which has allowed them to come closer than ever to fully realizing the designer’s fantastical vision for his brand. “There’s been more room to really think about what we’re making, whereas in the past there’s been concessions on fit or fabric or even having time to truly research and figure out exactly what I wanted to do,” he said backstage after presenting his fall 2020 collection.Spanning a full 40 looks, Rogers’s first post-CFDA show brought back some familiar silhouettes—there was the bulbous strawberry-shaped waist (Rogers says it’s become one of his best sellers), which reappeared on the runway in violet, and he worked in some past references, like Pierrots, the French cinematic clowns that informed last season’s ruffled necklines. As for new inspirations, he cited trash bags, of all things—he says that a curtain brushing the floor in a Renaissance painting has the same energy as a crumpled garbage bag—and mid-century couturier Alix Barton, also known as Madame Grès, whose later work skewed more graphic and progressive than the goddess-draped gowns that made her famous.The real step forward for Rogers this season, though, came with his highly saturated, sometimes pearlescent fabrics. Whereas before he had to be resourceful with his textiles, often working with deadstock materials, now he’s able to fully take advantage of the Garment District: All of the patterns and sumptuous fabrics on display this season were factory made. “All of the things that my team and I have been dreaming up, we were able to execute on a level that you haven’t seen from us before,” Rogers said.This elevated level of execution applied to structure too. For the wide-shoulder, hand-stitched suiting this season, Rogers double-padded the shoulders, backed it in horsehair that was fully fused, and lined it all in silk. “These clothes are expensive, and they should look expensive,” Rogers explained. “I’m trying to make clothes that are heirlooms that even I can’t afford, but maybe when I’m 40 or 50 I’ll be able to.
It’s not about the now, but it’s very much about the future.”This question of the future is an interesting prospect for Rogers at the moment. His designs have already become red carpet favorites with cosigns from the likes of Tracee Ellis Ross and Rihanna, but he is now producing on a larger scale thanks to a recent purchase from Net-a-Porter. In thinking about the potential commercial nature of his work, Rogers cited the popularity of that strawberry silhouette. “For something that morphs the shape so much, which maybe historically hasn’t been seen as flattering, women from a size 0 to a 14 have ordered the dress,” he said. “It goes to show that it’s not about dressing for the world—it’s about dressing for yourself. We’re not out here making 2,000 units of anything. We’re trying to make a few things for the few people who love it, and really make things that will last.”
8 February 2020
Last season, which was young Baton Rouge–born, Brooklyn-based designer Christopher John Rogers’s second, he proclaimed that he wanted to prove himself a serious contender in New York. At that time, his presentations gleefully showcased his whimsical take on eveningwear—cascading tulle, slimming taffeta suits, pleated lilac skirts—and people like Michelle Obama, Lizzo, and Tracee Ellis Ross took note, each wearing one of Rogers’s pieces out in the world. He thereby proved himself serious enough to become one of the 2019 CFDA/VogueFashion Fund finalists. This only motivated him to buckle down further. “After hearing the news [about the CFDA/VogueFashion Fund], I wanted to create the biggest splash that I could while addressing concerns about the clothes not being commercial enough or only being evening,” Rogers said backstage after his show earlier today, just moments after the thunderous applause from the crowd at Spring Studios died down.The resulting collection spanned a wide range of Rogers’s influences—he referenced everything from Pierrots, the naïve clowns of old cinema, to Paul Gauguin’s paintings of Tahiti. Given the breadth of Rogers’s obsessions, it’s no wonder he rounded out 35 distinct looks. There wasn’t a standout, mountainous tulle gown as Rogers has presented in the past (he mostly let that textile function as an accessory, wrapping long pieces of tulle around models’ necks as one would a scarf). Instead, he delivered more readily wearable pieces that still expressed his signature sense of whimsy.In addition to sumptuous Italian silks, upholstered linens, and some deadstock fabrics that he fashioned into slouchy blazers, Rogers also incorporated elements of workwear this season, thereby skirting any sort of formalwear pigeonholing of his brand. Rogers offered up a refined use of the durable canvas that’s traditionally used for tote bags by creating chic A-line skirts and streamlined work pants. He also dotted his collection with airy Swarovski crystal–adorned silk button-down shirts and emerald green slips. True to his first collection, though, Rogers kept his sharp tailoring and vibrant use of color constant, and remained committed to dramatic silhouettes. The final garment was the most notable in that sense: a crystal-dotted, collared gown that most resembled a classic Pierrot’s all-white collarette and exaggerated costuming (the crystals that neatly punctuated the design took 11 hours to press on).
Rogers still works out of his small living room; he said that this season, friends and collaborators helped craft many of the pieces in their own homes. He’s aware of the charmingly homespun appeal this lends his designs, but he’s adamant that he wants a proper studio, and hopes to get stocked in stores after this collection. He envisions his customer as a savvy fashion person, one who’s self-assured enough to understand that you can be multiple things at one time. By bringing his otherworldly, frothy vibe a bit down to earth, Rogers seems to have taken that idea to heart in his own work, too.
7 September 2019
Last season, Baton Rouge–born, Brooklyn-based designer Christopher John Rogers made an auspicious debut, presenting a vibrant collection punctuated with hot pink organza ruffles and exaggerated church hats fit for a Jacquemus acolyte. Rogers’s inspirations were quite fantastical, bridging the gap between a mid-century couture show, an eerily empty California beach town, and the planet Mars with clothes that brought a bit of an absurdist touch to eveningwear. In light of the fact that the majority of Rogers’s contemporaries (he’s the ripe old age of 25) are more inclined toward streetwear, the formal and unapologetically fun creations he set forth felt like a breath of fresh air.With his second collection, which he showed last night on Canal Street, Rogers tightened up his vision without losing any of the whimsical charm of his debut. “Last season, obviously, the mission was to really have fun and show people what we were about, but this season I wanted to show growth and that we’re trying to be serious contenders in New York,” Rogers said amidst the buzzing crowd who braved the slush and hail to take in his playful creations. In spite of this more ambitious attitude, he hasn’t lost his penchant for out-there references; this season, he says he was thinking about “mid-century cotillion balls, debutantes, and quinceañeras, but as if those celebrations were thrown in a neolithic site like Stonehenge, and then Dr. Seuss drew them.”Rogers deftly delivered on this ambitious undertaking. He took some of the most notable silhouettes from last season, particularly the standout hot pink taffeta number, and exaggerated them further; in that case, he offered up an even more dramatic canary-yellow version of the gown, which was comprised of cascading ruffles. He added additional structure to his creations, showing an impossibly wide sky-blue and neon green skirt and a strawberry-shaped waist on one gown, which he said was made from a difficult process of stuffing boning with tulle.The young designer is equally skilled at keeping things pared down, though, as he proved with some of the slimmer dresses this season: the hand-painted black sheath, which artist Drake Carr decorated with the visage of a laughing woman, proved a fine example of this more honed-in approach to tailoring. Carr lent his paintbrush to many of the pieces in the collection, and Rogers even converted some of Carr’s portraits into a print made up of many different expressive characters.
There are some mental gymnastics required in thinking about how Rogers makes these technically impressive gowns and suits. He still sews everything in his Brooklyn apartment with the help of his two roommates, and they all have full-time day jobs (Rogers is an associate designer at Diane von Furstenberg). Now that celebrities likeCardi BandSZAhave started to wear his label, and especially after the reveal of this assured sophomore collection, he’ll definitely need to get a proper studio soon.
14 February 2019