Eckhaus Latta (Q2982)
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American fashion brand
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Eckhaus Latta |
American fashion brand |
Statements
The Eckhaus Latta spring 2025 show was a dinner, I mean a show, I mean a dinner. Walking into the Tribeca loft where it was held, no one was sure what was happening but everyone was excited. Guests were asked to wear Eckhaus Latta, some were dressed in pieces from the new season. Looking around before the dinner began, I would ask guests—“Are you wearing latest season?” There was the artist Chloe Wise in a double-layered cardigan made so that the buttons scrunched as if it was too small for her—from the back it was just a single layer of fabric. She called it a “mullet cardigan.” The editor ofA MagazineBlake Abbie was in a cool khaki nylon tracksuit that was all Eckhaus Latta’d out; the pants were pleated, with an extra-wide leg that had an extra-high waistline, although I couldn’t tell because it was obscured by the elastic waist of the zip-up jacket. Underneath he wore a red open weave knitted cardigan that looked like crochet. I was able to examine the trousers better on Loren Kramar, the artist who performed during last season’s show—the waistband had an extra panel underneath that created a geometrical Nehru-collar shape but at the waist. TheGQeditor Samuel Hine was wearing a black nylon suit; the back of the jacket had a curved seam with laces at the bottom so that you can gather the back of the jacket and scrunch it if you like.“This season we were into taking really simple materials and playing with them,” Mike Eckhaus explained during a preview at their makeshift studio in an East Village hotel a few days before their presentation. “We call this ‘the Hugging Group’ where it’s the front of a shirt, and it’s the back of a shirt, and they loop into each other, and there’s a deconstruction to them.” Eckhaus was wearing this shirt at the dinner: it looks normal from the front, but from the back and the side it looks like two separate pieces of fabric. Another set they called the “flip group” made from cotton rib that was like two garments mirrored-flipped on each other, to be worn up or down. Last season the designers mentioned they were looking to figure out what an Eckhaus Latta basic might look like and this season it seemed like they had continued to push the boundary of how much you can explode a silhouette or a concept and have it retain its essence. “So often we think of basics as just a white T-shirt or a pair of blue jeans,” Eckhaus added.
“How can we take these things and give them an edge, and a twist to them, and have them be this thing that when you see it you’re like ‘what exactly is going on?’ and then you realize, ‘oh, this is actually so everyday and simple.’”
9 September 2024
A quiet conversation taking place across New York this season is the uphill battle that is being an independent designer in the city. Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta probably know this better than anyone: more than a decade after they started, they’re still fine tuning aspects of their business. In recent seasons they’ve begun showing their pre-collections with their main collections: “There’s no reason why a company of our scale should be having four collections or eight shows, or why we should be compared to a company that does,” said Latta. And beginning this season, they’ve switched their internal schedule around so they can go to market before staging their fashion show. “Knowing we were going to do that [switch], we were thinking that the point of the show should be an opportunity to do something different or do a refresh,” Latta said a day before the show at their Bushwick studio. “We’ve been doing this for 13 years now: what does an Eckhaus Latta show mean for us?” Eckhaus added. “Quiet luxury is a term that’s used a lot—and that’s sonotwhat we are— but I like this idea of paring things back towards an idea of minimalism, which for us was just more about, ‘How do we make clothes and work that are concise?’”For fall, that meant a runway show inside an empty industrial office in Hudson Square, and a sparse musical performance by Loren Kramar, which began with a cover of Lana Del Rey’s “hope is a dangerous thing for a woman like me to have—but I have it.” The first look was a cropped jacket made from laminated felt with an oversized faux-fur collar and cuffs worn with a pencil skirt with spiral seams and cutouts that revealed a little bit of leg. The laminated felt material resembled both leather and corrugated cardboard—something that you immediately need to touch in order to figure out exactly what it is. A shaggy coat in that same shade of cardboard beige was paired with an easy semi-sheer cotton ribbed tank, and straight leg slouchy jeans in an earthy acid wash. (The jeans have a full zipper around the crotch and are called the “GoodTime jean.”)One thing Eckhaus Latta has never lacked is sex appeal. The clothes may have been more restrained, but there was an unmistakable seduction implicit in the way that certain knits hugged the body, or certain fabrics swooshed as they walked by. A pair of slouchy pleated corduroys was garment washed until they achieved the softest hand; their drape had all the sensuality of a slinky velvet evening gown.
Paired with an easy ribbed knit tank and a faux-fur scarf tossed around the neck, the look was simply too fabulous while still being completely grounded. A group of quilted pieces was a highlight; especially a surplus-inspired two-in-one jacket with a removable vest in shiny red oxblood, and a gently curved pair of trousers in the same color, which were worn with a multi-color patchworked sweater. Another pair in charcoal gray had zippers that allowed the pants to be converted into a skirt, and was worn with an easy, super lightweight knit cardigan with a contrasting collar unbuttoned all the way to the belly button. It was all very sexy without trying very hard.Elsewhere, a cropped denim jacket was slashed at the rib cage, just above the last button, leaving the top part to fit semi-loosely around the body, and the bottom to fit tightly against the torso. The last three looks featured black organza embroidered with elastic and printed with vintage photos found on eBay, layered over simple white slip dresses. By now the singer had moved on from Lana Del Rey and into a cover of “New York, New York.” The choice of songs felt like a distinct message. While so many people love to declare that New York fashion is over, Eckhaus Latta believe in the city and in the community that has nurtured them throughout the years.
10 February 2024
“This season, we’re thinking about our identity as Americans who make and predominantly sell jeans and T-shirts,” Zoe Latta said a few days before the Eckhaus Latta show at the designers’ makeshift studio in Chinatown. “What are pieces that we can add into this idea of sportswear in 2023?”Latta and Mike Eckhaus never really have fantastical inspirations for their collections, but there’s always something magical that seeps in through their matter-of-fact approach to making clothes. What they want is to do is sell. (Their venue this season was the International Building in Rockefeller Center, which harks back to the great business centers of yesteryear, with dramatic escalators and a 45-foot statue of Atlas “carrying the heavens he was condemned by Zeus to hold upon his shoulders for all eternity,” as they wrote in their show notes.)“There’s something deeply sad about working all day and night on a garment that’s going to be seen for four minutes max, and then maybe get pulled [for a photo shoot], and then lost by a stylist. Or FedEx,” Latta said. “So we want to figure out where our language exists in an exciting way, but also in a way that is reproducible and wearable. Finding the things that can be a more ‘luxury’ offering and the ones where we can have more accessible price points that are still cool and exciting.” On the luxury end, they worked with deadstock leather from Portugal to make fantastic jackets, slim dresses, and baggy jeans that will be produced in limited runs. They’re also introducing a line of unisex sunglasses. “No peacock styles here, just two classic styles that look good on everyone and won’t be out of style next season,” she said.As always, the excitement came from the materials. The designers worked with Unspun to develop custom fabrics for denim. “It was so much fun to work with a new technology and develop fabrics,” Latta said. A pair of extra-wide, coarse-woven jeans was made out of twine they sourced at a hardware store. They curved elegantly around the legs like a small ball skirt, but also gave the impression of a cowboy in chaps (there were hints of the American West throughout). Another pair was made from the kind of plastic that’s used for Ikea bags, and yet another from the yarn the company uses to calibrate its looms.
Unspun 3D-prints its jeans by weaving circular tubes graded to the size, which makes them seamless (and almost zero waste) and also allows for the creation of interesting shapes, like in a pair made from shiny foil that draped elegantly around the legs and another pair made from a Lurex type of material that offered a bit of madcap opulence in the little loops the fibers created as they circled the legs.
10 September 2023
The room at Performance Space New York where the Eckhaus Latta show took place went pitch black. Pure white spotlights illuminated it at once, the ambient electronic duo Demdike Stare began playing, and the models furiously pumped their way along the runway, which was tightly set up like a labyrinth. The first wore a dark wool overcoat with reversed and exposed seams over a cropped blue and black ribbed sweater and wide leg black trousers, big stomping boots at their feet. If the dark mood seemed completely opposite Eckhaus Latta’s joyous and airy presentation last season at a garden in the East Village, it wasn’t a mistake.At their studio in Brooklyn a few days before the show, Zoe Latta had explained that “the different approach” for fall was a response to FedEx losing their main collection last season. “So then it was more like, ‘OK, we don’t have any of it—what would we have done differently?’” While the designers took it as an opportunity for new beginnings, the clothes also revealed their raw emotional state. Jersey dresses, tops, and jackets had inside-out seams that were left unfinished to create little horizontal slashes across the body; layered black mesh dresses and shirts made from cotton had a coarser, more natural hand that felt less plastic-y against the body. Tops made from shearling were left unfinished to show their beauty in a natural state. “This season there was a want for a certain kind of hardness,” Mike Eckhaus said. “There’s a kind of moodiness, not in a pessimistic way, but maybe on edge, an uneasy feeling that we are curious to play with,” Latta continued. The clothes felt urgent.This was a collection about protection, defiance, and most importantly, control, but as the show progressed, the color palette began shifting away from darkness. A moss green overcoat gave way to a brown and green pieced shearling top worn with a pair of wide leg jeans with painted stripes in shades of green, blue, orange and black, and shoes decked out in primary colors. A gorgeous pink oversized bomber jacket was hand knit in Bolivia and paired with a wide wale corduroy skirt of the same shade that zipped off at the front and back (there was also a pair of snap-off corduroy trousers). “We’re thinking of things that come together and come apart, and letting things be mutable as garments,” Eckhaus said.The journey towards the light continued with a natural linen button down tucked into a matching wrap skirt of asymmetrical length.
Some of the best looks in the collection came out towards the end, like the pieces made from a sort of coated gray vinyl which takes on a marbleized effect through regular wear and tear. That was turned into dresses and skirts and, most winningly, a really great pair of jeans. A top and skirt made from caramel-colored “tech organza” had rounded gathered seams and drawstring details that highlighted the shape of the body underneath.Each season, Eckhaus Latta includes a poem or a text in their show notes. This season’s ended with “Be Fluidly Brutal and Find God.” They’re on their way.
12 February 2023
The Eckhaus Latta spring show took place in one of those lush and beautiful gardens that you can’t believe actually exist in the middle of the city. The weather was not too hot, not too humid, and the spirits were sky-high before harpist Mary Lattimore began playing. As models walked out in geometric metallic knit tops that glistened in the sun like tinsel, their faces shiny like doughnuts (turns out it was a peel-off face mask), it was clear the buoyant mood felt before the presentation wasn’t just on account of people running into each other after not seeing them for a while, but it was what Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta actually wanted everyone to feel.“I think this season we felt rather optimistic and wanted that to be expressed within the clothing,” Eckhaus said backstage after the show. “I feel like there’s been this general sense of apathy that we, our community, or just our friends have been feeling,” Latta added, picking up the beat immediately. “This is kind of an attempt to be like, ‘It is still chaos. The world still feels a little fucked, but let’s have fun.’”There was joy in Hari Nef’s cream slip dress, adorned with embroidered threads covered in beads that click-clacked this way and that as she walked through the grass. Musician Ethel Cain, wearing a proper ecru cropped bouclé jacket (and matching wrap-around skort) with a “Fear no plague” tattoo right in the middle of her sternum, was cheeky. No, wait, actually cheeky was a burgundy bubble polo shirt, worn with what looked to be a one-leg pant (the show notes called it an object) that exposed exactly half of the model’s buttocks. Silhouettes were slightly oversized and gave the illusion of being askew; attention was paid to the back of the garments as much as the front with image placement, interesting pockets, and other details. “It’s a sense of wanting that fullness,” Eckhaus said. “I feel like we’re so accustomed to images now—the front image—but clothing is 360, and we wanted to have that juxtaposition of what you’re experiencing on the front of the body versus the back, having it feel more rounded or having different types of energy that move back and forth.”
10 September 2022
When Eckhaus Latta arrived in New York in 2012, the brand founded by two Rhode Island School of Design grads was immediately deemed crafty, arty, and indie. The last label stuck: After 10 years in business, Eckhaus Latta is one of New York’s strongest standing independent labels, with two brick-and-mortar stores, an e-commerce business, and admirers across the country, from Los Angeles to New York. Its 10th anniversary show at the former Essex Market affirmed that after a decade of independence, Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta are still charting their own course in fashion.Soundtracked by noise musician Brian Chippendale, nestled somewhere between the empty shelves and frozen food displays, in collaboration with DJ Doss, the show danced between Eckhaus Latta signatures. Sheer, glittery knits were slashed open at the back; minidresses were cut on a square edge; and tailoring was slit to reveal a spine, a thigh, or a breast. Worn by the brand’s friends and collaborators, including David Moses, Hari Nef, Maryam Nassir Zadeh, Thistle Brown, Cole Mohr, and Paloma Elsesser, the collection was a summation of everything Eckhaus Latta has built. It was cool, unfussy ready-to-wear with undertones of kink, craft, and community.But fall 2022 was also a push to expand the EL repertoire. “We didn’t want to be nostalgic or retrospective,” said Eckhaus postshow. “But we did want to bring back the things that we loved from our early collections, the handwork especially,” added Latta. The chain-mail pieces that closed the show, graphically sliced up to be equal parts erotic and acerbic, were handmade in the brand’s atelier. “It took months!” said Eckhaus, laughing. Hand-darned jeans and tops offered more commercially viable options. The irony of Eckhaus Latta’s 10 years is that while its strange handmade vests, dresses, and tops are among the most compelling clothing of NYFW, its business drivers have been the much-loved EL jeans and dip-dyed tees. But like every indie banger or jazz tune, the notes must resolve in the end. May Eckhaus Latta’s next 10 years be about furthering the bond between its tender handwork and commercial hits.
13 February 2022
I want to be the first to apologize about Eckhaus Latta’s show being one hour and one minute late. The situation was cruel: Another big-time brand was showing on the Hudson River, 54 minutes away from Eckhaus Latta’s usual spot on Scott Avenue in Bushwick. Critics, editors, and other members of the press were forced to choose between the two shows, and a few of us were tasked with reporting on both.In my long, long car ride, the irony set in that I was leaving a show about connecting with the youth of New York to sprint to Brooklyn to find both young and establishment New Yorkers waiting to see what Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta cooked up. The Drunken Canal’s Claire Banse and Gutes Guterman called it “the show, the only show!” of New York Fashion Week, but it was obvious from the hundreds of people crowded into their seats, including Rosalía and Troye Sivan, and in the standing section that they weren’t exaggerating.Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta have built up such goodwill not only because they are thoughtful designers and kind people, but because they are consistent. Of all the New York brands, they were the only ones to figure out how to have an intimate live show in September 2020. Even in the bleakest of times, even when they don’t have the answer just yet, Eckhaus and Latta are pushing forward, striving, trying—and they are not compromising for anyone, even the fashion system that squashed their show in the middle of a rushed day.What they sent out at dusk was one of their most concise, exacting collections ever. “It’s about feeling more free,” said Eckhaus. “Really feeling yourself, coming out of the past year-and-a-half and wanting to feel sexy and confident and free.” Garments were filmy, thin dust-colored layers of nylon layered together, ivory cotton dresses and bodysuits with oval cutouts and hundreds of snaps, and airy shirts in lime and faux leather jackets in cinnamon left open. Pieces were named after transient, erotic words: vapor turtleneck, undone jumpsuit, wisp dress.The torsos were out, the nipples were out, and in a statement of intent: models wore black thongs instead of the industry-standard beige. Top notes of Lang and undertones of Cianciolo are always felt in their collections; this one was more Helmut, less Susan, even if she did walk in an eggplant knit set: A parade of sleek, honest, horny garments that lusts for the human body in a sort of clinical way.
Both Latta and Eckhaus had a reckoning with their own bodies this past year; she became a first-time mother, he had a breakup and then the requisite hot boy summer. “We’re going through different things, but we both have a desire to just be fucking real,” said Latta. So let’s get real: We’re all held together by a string or a snap, doing the best we can. The sign on the building behind the runway read “Enlightenment.” After that show, I’m feeling good about fashion.
11 September 2021
When Zoe Latta and Mike Eckhaus began work on their latest collection, they were feeling glum. As the duo explained on a Zoom call today—Latta dialing in from her studio in L.A. and Eckhaus on set in Bushwick, where the brand’s faux show, or virtual show, or whatever you want to call it, was shortly to take place—that bummed-out vibe provided a (dim) creative spark, suggesting that their focus ought to be on comforting shapes and textures and a somber palette. Eckhaus and Latta went on to report that, thankfully, they are feeling more optimistic now—and that they are eager to get back to fashion business as usual, with live events and people around, but in the meantime, like the rest of us, they’re making do. Perhaps accidentally, it’s that sentiment that served as the red thread through this fine outing. The most arresting idea the designers explored this time out was the deconstruction of familiar silhouettes in ways that created artful voids in the clothes or that made them adaptable into different forms. It was a poetic expression of our current state, a year into the pandemic—for aren’t we all now accustomed to a life filled with absences that we must continually recontour to suit the latest transmission rates?This type of deconstruction was nearly omnipresent here—there were too many examples to enumerate, ranging from the slice in the back of a sleeve to the way a knit skirt tied around the waist, like a sweater jettisoned on a hot day, to the holes incorporated into a sequined skirt. But it wasn’t the only idea pursued; Eckhaus and Latta also played with optical patterns, like trippy rib knits and a black-and-white jacquard, and with ways of giving a sense of hand to synthetic fabrics, e.g., by quilting or garment washing nylon. Several of their classic silhouettes were revisited in purposefully degraded form—notably the now classic Eckhaus Latta denim came with distressing along the sculptured seams. The collection was small—no “show” pieces—but thorough; every look was wholly considered, from form to detail. Perhaps the collection’s most admirable quality, though, was its grit—though we often look to fashion for fantasies of the future, and that kind of thing is good and necessary, it requires just as much imagination, if not more, to see the present clearly and manifest its mood. This Eckhaus Latta outing not only captured our present sense of occupying a liminal space, it made it look cool.
2 March 2021
Ramble. Stroll. Perambulate. Take a constitutional. Promenade. Schlep. Wander. Over the past six months, there’s been plenty of time to come up with synonyms forwalking—since walking is, thanks to COVID, pretty much everyone’s primary outdoor activity these days. The Eckhaus Latta show this afternoon celebrated this fact: Like so much else in our lives of late, the show was staged outdoors, underneath a section of the FDR Drive where a long, straight jogging path provided a runway, and with a bare minimum of fuss; hair au naturel, model-applied makeup, no soundtrack, just an abbreviated collection and the train rumbling by now and then. “We wanted it to feel, like, no spectacle,” Mike Eckhaus explained after the show. “Like the models could just be going out for a walk with their friends.”The clothes matched that easygoing mien. There were stylish sweats, of course—de rigueur—but also baggy jeans and knit suiting and gingham tops with the airiness of wind-borne kites. The most fitted looks were knit—ribbed or printed upon—and the most tailored were done of featherweight nylon, the material often patchworked together in tonal color blocks. These were casual items, but every garment seemed to have been hand-worked, and that gave this collection a bit of emotional undertow; in a socially distanced era, it felt as though Eckhaus and Zoe Latta were communicating touch through their clothes. That was true of the collection’s ornate crochets, but it was also true of the hand-dyed jeans and the burnout florals. These were looks not just for walking around in but for keeping locked-down lonely hearts company.
18 September 2020
The big news ahead of tonight’s Eckhaus Latta show was that the brand waspartneringwith resale site The RealReal to source footwear for the runway. It’s a small thing, but actions like this do add up, sustainability-wise; why not provide models with secondhand shoes, and then sell them on after the show, as Eckhaus Latta and The RealReal are doing? Brands that make bank off the shoes they produce and spotlight at their shows aren’t going to bite on this, of course, but for Eckhaus Latta, the move made perfect sense. Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta have always been more interested in producing clothes for varying types of people to integrate into their lives and wardrobes as they please than they have been in creating a brand uniform. Seeing all different shoes on the models tonight underscored the designers’ commitment to designing collections that can be interpreted in a variety of ways.This outing offered a smorgasbord of choices for Eckhaus Latta’s diverse fans. The designers were working through a bunch of ideas here—colored acid-washed and “experimental” distressed denim, as they put it after the show; boxy tailoring paired with either super-abbreviated skirts or languid, oh-so-barely flared trousers; liquid fabric effects; shapes constructed around negative space, as in the cutout knit dresses that closed the show.As is typical for Eckhaus Latta, the clothes were gently rather than aggressively challenging, with most of the novelty to be found in the occasional eccentric proportion, the unexpected finish on a garment, or the painterly quality of the garments’ surfaces, to wit, a sweater knit with what looked like brushstrokes of bold color, or jeans with a watercolor-y acid wash. Everything, even the purposefully frayed pieces, was executed with a lot of polish—and that, Latta and Eckhaus said, was the real story here. The duo’s thinking about sustainability extended beyond their partnership with The RealReal; as Latta noted, they were posing “existential questions” to themselves, like, “What are we doing here?” and “Why are we making any of this?” that they answered by focusing on craft. The goal, they said, was for every piece in this collection to have a long life cycle, whether that means one wearer using a garment over many years, or several wearers enjoying the same piece first-, second-, third-, or fourth-hand. “Whatever we made,” Latta elaborated, “we wanted it to last.”
12 February 2020
This afternoon’s Eckhaus Latta show opened with a wave of double takes: Was that aruffledminidress on the runway, or were the audience’s eyes deceived? Lest anyone was truly in doubt that Zoe Latta and Mike Eckhaus had indeed produced such a frothy confection, the designers followed up that first look with series of similar ones—a frilly blouse; a short, A-line frock patchworked with lace; and, for good measure, a boxy men’s button-down that gave the graphic, tape-like trim on the foregoing garments headline billing. Speaking after the show, Eckhaus and Latta said that this season they set out to work with fashion elements that generally made them uncomfortable, and, in particular, take on their historic allergy to cuteness and frill. “We wanted to see what those sorts of elements looked like done in our hand,” Eckhaus explained. Glitter and sparkle was another un–Eckhaus Latta element that the duo stared down and made its own; a series of all-over sequined dresses in blue and orange came off as coolly minimal, despite the Bob Mackie–level of embellishment. And this was an overall theme of the show: Again and again, Eckhaus and Latta found ways to make familiar kinds of fashion frippery look new and crisp.The designers’ willingness to take on ideas that cut against their natural instincts was an expression of confidence—and, too, their preference this time out for showing full looks rather than collaging items into magpie ensembles. Thus you caught the full force of Latta’s knits, whether hallucinogenic intarsias or 21st-century updates on Missoni’s iconic weaves; some of the strongest statements here were the knit tank and flare ensembles, the pants bottoming out in unapologetic pleated bells. The tailoring was just as forceful, whether voluminous pinstriped suits for the guys or, for the ladies, ultra-high-waist wide-leg pants with a satiny finish, paired with a matching blazer with doubled pockets. Shapes traded between slouchy and blouson and utterly sleek, with one of the collection’s standout garments, pairs of sheer-ish nylon cargo pants, finding a middle ground between the two. Those cargos will sell like hotcakes, and indeed, much of this collection seemed destined to do well on the racks. The clothes were, in relative terms, very slick—another element, perhaps, that Eckhaus and Latta decided they were ready to take on and make their own.
10 September 2019
Maybe it’s the Brooklyn of it all, but something about the latest Eckhaus Latta show put one in mind of gentrification. Passing through Williamsburg and pressing on into Bushwick, all the way to the neighborhood’s Ridgewood edge—where, per usual, the Eckhaus Latta show was held—you see some strange abutments, derelict zones overlooked by gleaming cantilevered towers; folksy murals in conversation with airbrushed billboard ads; gussied-up brownstones with street vendors selling homemade empanadas a stone’s throw from their stoops. The new Eckhaus Latta collection was a bit like that: The homespun, improvisational Eckhaus Latta look was still there, but a sleeker version of the brand seemed to be taking over. You might say that Eckhaus Latta is gentrifying itself.And that isn’t a bad thing. Would that urban developers approached remakes of the streetscape with the sense of aesthetic purpose that Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta brought to bear in their fashion upgrade this season. The tailoring here was a case in point: The duo have spent a couple of seasons getting their arms around the technique, and this time out, feeling confident, they started teasing out new possibilities, interrupting the flow of their suiting by patterning in slits, or adding architectural volumes to pant legs and jacket sleeves. As the designers noted after the show, Eckhaus originally trained as a sculptor, and with this collection, he was putting those old muscles to work again. And indeed, there were quite a few interesting statements about shape and space on the Eckhaus Latta catwalk this afternoon, be it in the drape of a contrast-check dress, the pleats spilling off the back of a forest green gown, or the archipelagos of floral knit sewn onto sweaters.Latta’s muscles were flexing, too. A textile designer by training, she’s shifted some of her focus from the beloved Eckhaus Latta knits—though there were some spectacular color-blocked examples here—onto less showy materials. From the nubby woolens to the silvery jacquard woven with a landscape from Yosemite, the fabrics did much of the work of elevating this collection. Simply put, they came across as luxurious. And that’s what drove the gentrification analogy home—the way the luxe-ness was juxtaposed with punkish gestures, like the spray-painting on denim, and rough-hewn ones, like the weird orange stain on a huge Ugg shearling overcoat. (Ugg also collaborated with the brand on the collection’s shoes.
) The mix felt organic and dynamic and exciting, the way a diverse, ever-evolving city does.
9 February 2019
For the past several seasons, Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta have been staging their fashion shows at a venue way out in Bushwick. It’s been a testament to the interest New York’s fashion community takes in the duo’s clothes that its denizens have been willing to make the trip. This season, Eckhaus and Latta relocated—to a space slightly further out in Bushwick, on an upper level of an industrial building where sheet metal was being cut on the ground floor. Point being, getting to the Eckhaus Latta show was a real slog, and it made you think about all the ways the designers try to put distance between themselves and the fashion system as a whole. That Eckhaus Latta represents something apart was a theme reified this summer by the Whitney Museum’s staging of a show/retail installation by the brand. But, honestly, how outside of fashionisEckhaus Latta, given that its apparel is now carried by about 60 stockists worldwide? And when, like many brands, it’s kept afloat by steady sales of accessible goods such as jeans and fine-gauge knits?This question isn’t meant to cast aspersions on Eckhaus Latta. It’s merely intended to introduce the tension underlying the strong collection shown today: On the one hand, Eckhaus and Latta want to be outré and playful and handmade, and on the other, these designers are getting exceedingly good at the commodity business of fashion. The tension was discernible, as well, in the fact that this afternoon’s show was soundtracked by children banging on pots and shaking tambourines, while a good many of the pieces on the runway were quite grown-up in tone; to wit, the newly emphasized tailoring. There were sheer T-shirts and dresses of spiderweb crochet, but such whimsical looks were vastly outnumbered by ones more matter-of-fact. Jeans dip-dyed and tie-dyed and trimmed with fringe; color-blocked knits in cool pastels; fluttery plaid dresses and polos in an earth-toned floral jacquard. Check outerwear in a dense, mesh-like material made a particularly strong impression; so did the aforementioned tailoring, especially the jackets, shown on male models, which featured giant dropped shoulders and cinched waists. This was a distinctive silhouette.Those jackets were one example of a much-repeated strategy here: Take a familiar fashion idea, and work it into Eckhaus Latta’s idiosyncratic vernacular.
The collection’s heavy use of check, plaid, and argyle worked to similar effect, and underscored the degree to which Eckhaus and Latta were straining to avoid print in favor of textural patterns. The show-closing dress, for instance, was a filament-fine knit of reworked argyle, and it neatly resolved the tensions operating here: The piece was special and unusual and had a strong sense of hand, but it was also recognizably a fashion object, not an objet d’art. The kiddie orchestra was fun to experience, but it was also misleading: Eckhaus Latta is growing up.
8 September 2018
While many New York designers are decamping to Paris, Eckhaus Latta is quickly staking its claim as one of the most important American brands to watch. The designers invited their audience to Bushwick for the second season in a row today, and had no problem filling their cavernous warehouse space, despite the wind and the rain. Building on the refined tailoring of the Spring collection, the show opened with a double-breasted suit-dress that was gently contoured to the body. That sense of polish continued through to the outerwear, including a striking poppy-red coat with billowing bell sleeves. Designers Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta have built a solid fan base on their boxy, industrial silhouettes, though lately they’ve been experimenting with softer, more classical lines, such as portrait-collar jackets. The show closed with a gorgeous striped zippered corset that was paired with a printed take on their trademark carpenter jeans, the kind of thing you could imagine Marie Antoinette wearing if she were an art-school dropout living in Greenpoint right now. “That corset literally stands up on its own!” said Eckhaus with a laugh. “You can’t tell by looking at it, but there’s quite a bit of padding in there to create the silhouette.”In a sense, Eckhaus and Latta are reexamining their business at the seams: They’ve folded a pre-collection into the offering they showed on the runway today. “It’s essentially Fall and Pre-Spring combined,” said Eckhaus after the show. “Or what we’re calling FallandWinter,” added Latta. It’s a smart, well timed move on their part, as the success of their direct-to-consumer sales continues to grow alongside wholesale. Since opening a store in Los Angeles, the duo has been able to gather in-depth market research. “There is only a curtain that separates our studio from our store,” explained Latta. “We can hear when our customers are trying on jeans, when men are trying on women’s clothes, and vice versa.” That kind of “live from the fitting room” feedback provides invaluable insight and has clearly helped in fine-tuning their instincts as they expand their repertoire. Now their cozy patchwork sweaters cut from dead-stock fabric hang side by side with knit dresses spun from Italian yarn and slinky rayon jersey eveningwear.Up until now, the independent design duo have gone it alone, but with talk of a New York store on the agenda, it seems they’re in expansion mode.
“We’re not about to jump into bed with just anyone,” said Latta with a smile. “It’s a bit like online dating, you have to wait for the right match.” Judging by their latest collection, these two are bound to go to the next level, regardless of which investor wins their hand.
10 February 2018
The thing about dragging Fashion Week-ers out to Bushwick in the middle of the day for a show is that, you know, the designers better deliver. Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta did just that today, sending out this buzzy brand’s most coherent and accomplished collection yet. The confidence of this outing was augured in its very first look—a wide-shouldered men’s suit with a cropped pant. There were a couple of statements being made here: First, that these designers, still most widely recognized for their experimental knits and abstract shapes, were ready to brave serious tailoring, and had ideas about how to give the category a uniquely Eckhaus Latta spin. Second, that Eckhaus and Latta had executed a tonal shift in the direction of formality. Not everything the duo sent down the runway was so upscale—there was a ton of casualwear—but there was an overarching sense of polish.Indeed, the refinement may have mattered most in this collection’s dressed-down garments. There was nothing sloppy about the hip-slung men’s trousers or sweaters open at the sides, such was the precision of the trouser cut and the exactitude of the size and placement of the sweater’s holes. The punctuating topstitch on many garments, for either men or women, articulated a similar form of control, while other embellishments, such as zippers or feathery fringe or patches, were deployed with restraint. Enough, no more.One of the more interesting conversations this collection engaged was nudity. Many of Eckhaus and Latta’s looks featured slits or other kinds of windows for skin to wink through—a gesture underlined by the appearance of a very pregnant belly on the catwalk. Gender-wise, the designers are pretty equal-opportunity in these kinds of coy moves, but the most assertive use of nudity was reserved for the women’s looks, notably the closing passage of sheer items. Speaking after the show, Eckhaus and Latta said they fully expected their customers to layer those pieces, to cover up; during it, you were tempted to wonder whether these looks would have had as much force had they been executed in opaque materials. It would be nice to see Eckhaus and Latta give that a whirl—to test the strength of their silhouettes once the shock value has been subtracted.
But, subconsciously or otherwise, the designers do seem to be making a point with their emphasis on exposure, saying something about how it feels, as a millennial, to shape an identity in full view of the public, whether that figurative nakedness is self-chosen, as in social media, or imposed by corporations or the NSA. Which is to say, Eckhaus Latta’s transparent looks may be a stunt, but they’re not a gimmick.Even so, what felt most radical here was a garment that didn’t need transparency to provoke. One natty men’s button-down, cut at the navel and tailored tight to the waist, came across as a challenge to norms, bursting with an intellect straight out of Saul Alinsky’sRules for Radicals: Use your opponent’s own beliefs, tactics, practices against them, in your own may. Make them yours. When Eckhaus Latta starts doing that consistently, there will be no stopping them. Especially since they’re already making the great denim that allows a brand to fund its experiments.
9 September 2017
Anticipation was running high for tonight’sEckhaus Lattashow. In a season wherein fashion-watchers have been waiting with impatience for a brand to give proper voice to the symphony of emotions playing on people at this troubled moment, Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta seemed poised to deliver. For one thing, they’re young designers at American fashion’s bleeding edge; surely they would be fearless in their expression of…well,something. Something that would explain people’s vexed-ness to themselves, and tell them where to take those feelings. Furthermore, Eckhaus and Latta have already proven themselves designers capable of striking an emotional chord: Previous shows of theirs have been truly moving and demonstrated their engagement with politics in work like last season’s election reform–themed collaboration with artist-musician Brendan Fowler. Eckhaus Latta, surely, would have answers.As it turns out, Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta have questions. Just as we all do. And the sartorial solutions they came up with for how to deal with our new American reality had a certain ducking-the-issue quality. There was a plaintive optimism in the collection’s bright florals, and a hunkering-down vibe to the fuzzy knits, broad-shouldered blazers, and elements like the button-off padded blankets on miniskirts and sculptural forms protruding off the backs of several looks. A retreat into small comforts was suggested by the addition of felted or lace florals to the collection’s cropped parkas, and prints such as the one found on a white deadstock brocade, featuring tiny images of snapshots and seemingly random objects—totems of the familiar in an atmosphere of the disconcerting and strange.These gestures mean something. But they may not mean enough. That’s not to undercut the interest of this outing from an aesthetic perspective; there were a lot of fine clothes here, with the sweaters, nylon trousers, outerwear and drape-y tailoring standing out as particularly retail-friendly. But you got the sense, overall, that Eckhaus and Latta are better at testing others’ assumptions—regarding gender binaries, for instance—than taking on a challenge to their own. The closing look, a hand-knit dress worn by India Menuez, emblazoned with the title of the Leonard Cohen song “Is This What You Wanted” made for a cry in the dark, registered from a crouch. Maybe that’s an accurate read on how many of us feel right now. But it’s time to stand up.
13 February 2017
“Just clothing, in a sense,” Mike Eckhaus offered today after showingEckhaus Latta’s latest collection. That was what he and codesigner Zoe Latta had been thinking about—“making things that we want to wear.” Says Eckhaus, “The more we do this, the more important that becomes to us.” Latta echoed the sentiment, saying that the pair had been tackling more retail-oriented concerns in a way “that still feels true to us and our brand.” More than perhaps any collection in its recent history, Spring brimmed over with pieces that seemed destined to expand this label’s fanbase.Held on a steamy morning in the Lower East Side’s Seward Park (home to the Hester Street Fair), the show was staged just a stone’s throw from Eckhaus Latta’s studio. Despite the sort of mild fracas that comes with putting on a fashion show in a well-trafficked New York City park, once things were underway, the effect was an overwhelmingly placid one. Guests cooled themselves off with provided sandalwood-perfumed fans, and from the word “go” it was clear that the tenor had shifted slightly. The opening look, a terrific oversize jacket and voluminous, paneled skirt in light denim, felt cool, sure, but plenty polished. Whereas in seasons past the designers and their interns had been busy stitching runway pieces, for Spring, Eckhaus and Latta upped the ante, working with sample rooms and seamstresses on their clothing’s construction from the inside out.The results were less overtly DIY than Eckhaus’ past offerings, but there was still a sense of deconstruction to be found. A collaboration with artist/musician Brendan Fowler’s project Election Reform, which encourages a critical look at the electoral process, was especially timely just a couple of months out from November 8. Fowler will be hosting a series of political programming at Eckhaus Latta’s L.A. store in October, where the capsule will be available exclusively. The resulting pieces are terrific. Sweatshirts, tees, and jeans with bits of shirting stitched onto them by embroidery spelling out both the brand’s name and ‘Election Reform’ over printed in color on just the embroideries. Complex sounding, sure, but by and large this was the most commercially viable collection we’ve seen from Latta and Eckhaus. “I don’t think we were like, ‘Let’s make a collection that will sell,’” Latta offered, “but we’re learning from things, and it’s exciting to have our clothes distributed.
We don’t want to only be seen as art school kids who don’t know how to make clothes, because we really aren’t.” Nearly every look in this considered edit was a winner, from foulard print suiting in emerald corduroy to wide-legged trousers with three-dimensional panels running down the sides. It’s true that with Latta and Eckhaus’ art school backgrounds and their sociological tack when it comes to looking at clothing, it can be tempting to get overly granular about the meaning of every one of their pieces. But a big part of the designers’ ethos is thinking about the lives of garments; you got the sense that the pieces here were destined for interesting ones.
11 September 2016
There’s a power in discomfort. Last night’sEckhaus Lattashow was a beautiful testimony to that fact—and to the line’s rapidly rising stock. The bicoastal brand drew impressive hordes out to—pause for effect—Queens (although only as far as Long Island City) for a takeover of the geodesic dome at MoMA PS1, where pieces by the label are currently on display as part of the museum’s ambitious“Greater New York” exhibition. Those seated found themselves inside a veritable fishbowl, encircled by standing guests and with the dome packed to the gills. While you would expect nothing less from Rhode Island School of Design alums Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta, the resulting site-specific presentation was a particularly interesting study in new ways to show clothing. Folding chairs were lined up facing opposite directions, meaning attendees had to get unusually familiar with their neighbors. And the arm’s-length distance that usually separates the runway from spectators was obliterated here. Models moved quickly through narrow, winding straits of editors, buyers, and cool kids, breaking down that construct in subtle ways—sometimes catching the eye of a guest, other times letting their garments brush against one’s knee.As for the clothes themselves, they walked a line between austere and luxurious; they also had, perhaps more than any EL collection to date, a feeling of purity (that sentiment was echoed by PS1 director Klaus Biesenbach postshow). Maybe that’s in part because the duo has gotten back in a basic way to some of the themes that interest them most, reflecting Eckhaus’s background in sculpture and Latta’s in textiles, as well as mutual interests like deconstruction. Those ideas have always been present in their looks, of course, but given the quick-fire ascent that Eckhaus Latta has enjoyed since launching back in 2012, there’s been a certain degree of technical learning on the fly. “[Things like deconstruction] were our starting points in making clothes,” Latta offered after the show, “and I think we had to put that on the back burner for a couple of seasons to learn about things like fit and patternmaking and seaming—simple things that we didn’t have training in. Now that we’re feeling a lot more confident in that, we got back to things that come more naturally to us.”It was evident in the garments, with their tactile appeal and emphasis on movement. Bits of outerwear and knits peeled back like onionskin.
Elsewhere, a coat was shown with a shrunken jacket hanging off its back on Sculpey buttons (the two pieces will be sold separately). Particularly striking were the fabrications: light citrus denim, sage green chiffon, and a stunning acid yellow velvet. In them, models looked both angelic and hard, some stopping in front of the photo pit with a defiant swagger. These clothes suggested that the brand, which has been refining its perspective a lot in recent seasons, recaptured its simplest essence with this show. By its end, as the cast of models spiraled, almost menacingly, inward and inward inside the domed space, you had the sense that Eckhaus Latta is both freer and more single-minded than ever.
16 February 2016
In recent seasons,Mike EckhausandZoe Lattahave risen to industry-wide prominence with their label, often described as arty, avant garde, or post-gender. The RISD grads have a real point of view (a rarer thing than you might think), which is unlike anything else on the New York schedule. For Spring they came up with an evocative collection, working, as usual, without set concepts (no “Paris in the ’70s” or “the work of Jackson Pollock” for these two).When the bicoastal designers convened in their New York studio to prepare for today’s show, they were struck by a feeling that fairly pulsed through their samples: lust. Whether the stuff of the id or just ideas that are bubbling around in Pop’s collective unconsciousness (some would say between the runway and the red carpet, we’re more preoccupied with baring it all than ever before), these clothes were hot-blooded and also eerily poignant.For some, the nudity (transparent pieces galore) on Eckhaus Latta’s catwalk will be the foremost topic of conversation, but as Eckhaus and Latta approached the idea, it had to be among fashion’s least gaze-oriented expressions of the body. These might be clothes about titillation, but they didn’t seem intended to titillate. Chalk some of that up to the casting choices: Alongside “proper” models were extended EL family of various ages and walks of life (Dev Hynes, Juliana Huxtable, Alexandra Marzella, and Grace Dunham, among others). Even the bits that didn’t bare it all revealed plenty. Consider pants slashed along the knees or the back of calves, or a slip dress hem that fell above the knee to reveal a flash of thigh. Even when Rihanna shows up in a sheer body stocking, there’s the sense that she has revealed less than these clothes did. The collection was largely stripped bare, with gorgeous, anemone-like body pieces crafted from glass bugle beads functioning as one of a couple of nods to self-ornamentation in the traditional sense.Beyond the conceptual, there were plenty of just plain great clothes here, and wearable to boot. The most transparent styles would work well for layering; meanwhile, a cropped suede mock turtleneck and the sensuous peach velvet suit were things that many a front row guest was keen to wear straight off the runway. The cerebral and the visceral in one collection? Now, that’s versatility.
15 September 2015