Vaquera (Q3605)
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Vaquera is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Vaquera |
Vaquera is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
A 10th anniversary can make even the most irreverent of designers turn contemplative. Vaquera’s Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee are on the precipice of that milestone and have been thinking about what comes next. “We’re still very punk in our roots,” said Taubensee, “but we’re asking ourselves, how can we also make it easy for people to understand and wear, and easy enough for us to survive?” DiCaprio put it more bluntly: “Shooting ourselves in the foot isn’t really where we see the future for our lives and this brand.”The challenges facing both emerging and established labels have been discussed ad infinitum this year in the face of contracting retail models and economic downturns. The designers gave us the sense that Vaquera hasn’t been immune to the difficulties that the label’s peers have experienced, but they’re charging forward anyway.Their idea for spring was to zero in on essentials. Backstage, they called them their “new basics,” pointing to a black bubble miniskirt with built-in bike shorts, bullet-bra tops (a surprise trend this season), and jersey tees with logos or other graphic treatments. Stretched around the arms, strapless bras gave button-downs a fetish-y vibe; without them, the shirts would make it in the straight world no problem, but is there any fun in that? In the end, these were not-that-basic basics, and that’s how their customers like it. DiCaprio and Taubensee have developed bankable signatures. A showgoer on the retail side reported that Vaquera consistently sells out on its e-commerce platform.But look closely and it seemed like they were also playing with other brands’ signatures. The interlocking V’s on denim jeans and canvas bags, the oversized gold-on-black chain prints, and the striped rugby with the winged Pegasus stamped on the chest reminded me of the kind of double takes they sent down their early runways. They’re no longer designing giant Tiffany & Co.–blue dust-bag dresses, as they did in their breakout collection for fall 2017, but their sense of subversion remains firmly in place. Only now that they’re growing up, they’ve got new categories on offer alongside it, including kitten-heel cowboy boots and pumps that rank up there with some of the coolest shoes of the season.
23 September 2024
Rihanna had been rumored to attend Vaquera tonight. As far as I could tell she didn’t turn up, but I did spy Julia Fox and Richie Shazam on the balcony. They were treated to Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee’s best show in some time. Back in the old days, the Vaquera designers decided on a theme and ran with it. One season it was doubt and faith, another identity crises. A year before the pandemic, they were thinking—rather presciently—about the early-onset domesticity of their twenty-something friends. Lately, though they’ve had commercial successes with their denim and jersey offerings, their runway efforts have felt more diffuse and vague.This time around, they were steamed up: about the time crunch between seasons, about a lack of days off, about their not so impressive bank accounts almost a decade into their design careers. What really ticked them off, they said, is how much they found themselves caring about money. There’s only one word for that: relatable!“Fashion these days is dominated by the crudest form of currency,” DiCaprio said. “We felt like in the past, artistic merit, a vision, and being punk was a bit more of a powerful currency.” And so, in a punk move, they developed an American currency print—not an easy thing to do on image creation tools, apparently—and graffiti’d Andrew Jackson’s eyes or painted over his face with hearts, and stamped the word FAKE over the White House. And then they used it for a matching button-down and tie, the cummerbund on a loose-fitting pair of trousers, and the three-dimensional rosette bodice on a cocktail dress.Toying with another currency—sex—there were cone bra tops and cone bra-printed t-shirts, titty twister tees à la their icon Vivienne Westwood, and distressed leather chaps, one of the season’s surprise trends. Claire Sullivan, with whom they operated Vaquera as a trio before her departure during Covid, wore a shrunken polo shirt with bulls-eye breast insets.DiCaprio and Taubensee aren’t naive enough to think that fashion is an artistic pursuit, but they aren’t cynical enough to believe that it’s all about dollars and cents, either. They would like a day off, but then again, they wouldn’t change it. “I’m grateful for where we are,” DiCaprio said. Keep grinding, guys.
26 February 2024
Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee emerged for their bows tonight in matching sunglasses, big eye-obscuring shields of the kind worn by post-op cataract patients and A-list celebrities. They said their collection was a consideration of the ways in which stars (and the rest of us) negotiate lives mediated by a 24/7 barrage of cameras. Do you want to be seen or do you want to hide? Is there a difference in a world where everyone is wielding an iPhone?Vaquera has never been mistaken as a brand for introverts and it isn’t about to be now. After opening with a gold fishnet catsuit, the breasts outlined like bullseyes, many of the “normal” looks that followed were split down the back, exposing bra straps and panties. Other looks used underwear as decoration. The pink satin briefs fixed to the front of an otherwise conventional skirt might not have registered as all that outré on the runway, but on the street it’d be a different story.Standing up along the runway, like fans crowding a police barricade at a red carpet or outside a fashion show, the crowd hooted and hollered in appreciation. There aren’t many collections here in Paris or in the other fashion capitals that deliver Vaquera’s kind of edgy fun. With Dover Street Market handling the brand’s production, sales, and distribution, DiCaprio and Taubensee are spiffing up their tailoring; there were couple of black pantsuits here that could pass in the straight world even with their bondage straps and industrial zip details, and a white cracked leather trench looked boss. And their jeans just keep getting better.With the screenwriter’s strike over, the red carpet may soon be on the rebound. Maybe some bold starlet will wear Vaquera’s bleached denim ball gown. We’d love to see it.
25 September 2023
Vaquera, a purveyor of designer jeans? Half a decade ago when they were getting their start on the New York runways, that’s not what anybody would have predicted for them. But since Dover Street Market started producing Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee’s collections, they’ve become insider favorites for denim that wears like trousers, with front pleats, say, or tuxedo stripe seaming down the sides.Their success surprises even them occasionally. Backstage DiCaprio and Taubensee were talking about dreams and nightmares, and how they can become interchangeable as time goes by. “We’re excited about selling commercial things,” DiCaprio said. “But I think this season we weren’t afraid to make things that weren’t necessarily for sales, and to say that that is an integral part of our brand.”Consider the silvery sequin dress in look 39, which a fellow audience member pointed out was a Vaqueraified version of a fall 2005 Chanel haute couture number modeled by the inimitable Shalom Harlow. Very dreamy. Jeans studded with blunt-ended nails came at the art and commerce conundrum from a different angle. The fact that a pair weighs in at 20 pounds all but guarantees they’re not destined for the sales floor.Mixed in amongst those punkish pants were more readily wearable pieces in the form of army sweaters and nylon cargos, and a faded black leather peacoat and pants. It’s the first season they’re using real leather, the more environmentally friendly choice than plastic “eco-leather,” they reckoned. The faux furs, of which there were many, weren’t as true to their underground roots.In the early days of Vaquera, they designed polo dresses with pointillist renderings of their designer heroes, Vivienne Westwood among them. She was present in tonight’s show via an updated version of her infamous “tit top” with twisted and tucked “nipple” details. She’s the proof that you can mix business and non-conformity.
27 February 2023
It was five years ago in February that Vaquera first caught the New York fashion crowd’s attention. An American flag dress with a mile-long train will do that for an upstart brand. Much has happened between then and now: The foursome became three, and then two; these days Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee are backed by Dover Street Market. You couldn’t call them mainstream, but they are stocked at the right online retailers. And lately they’ve been feeling itchy.“We’ve really been pushing toward having more commercial clothing and that is still really important to us,” Taubensee said backstage. “But it’s also important to remain true to what we did this for, which is expressing ourselves.” Enter another American flag dress, this one made from faded flags that were stolen by DiCaprio’s friends from houses on Fire Island, its construction more ambitious than the one from their debut. A deconstructed wedding dress—safety-pinned at the bodice, spliced down the middle, and worn over pink stretch satin athleisure and denim cut-offs—once belonged to DiCaprio’s mom. They aren’t likely to put these pieces into production (which will be a relief for Fire Island flag owners), but they are representative of the Vaquera spirit, which is irreverently anti-establishment.That irreverence came across in metallic “polo” shirts stitched with a lassoing cowboy instead of a mallet wielding polo player. As edgy as this presentation was with its speed metal soundtrack and models pounding around DSM’s 35-37 location, what the show conveyed is that in the five years since their debut DiCaprio and Taubensee have gotten quite handy at items like jeans and motorcycle leathers. The acid wash denim’s faint yellow cast came from what Taubensee described as soy stain; “we actually use soy sauce,” she explained. Let’s call it commercial, but still unconventional.
26 September 2022
“Fashion fan fiction” is how Patric DiCaprio—whose own name is even a fashiony fiction—and Bryn Taubensee used to describe Vaquera: tribute clothes for a world obsessed with referential dress. Bringing their runway show to Paris and showing at Dover Street Market’s 35-37 space for fall 2022 is the ultimate fashion fan fiction come true. Now instead of idolizing runway legends from afar, these American designers have “started becoming the people who we idolized,” said Taubensee.The duo surely rose to the occasion. Their craftsmanship has been on a steady uptick since linking with Dover Street Market Paris in early 2020, and this season they’ve made padded moto jacket puffers, tinsel-like sequin dresses, and airy angora knits that feel as high quality as they look. Bags have been developed for the second season and footwear is a collaboration with Vans alongside the same vintage shoes the brand has used for six years, repainted each season to coordinate with the collection. “You can see the layers of love,” said DiCaprio.And love, in fact, was the driver for the Vaquera this season. Romance was never really a feeling one got at their all-bass, hurried catwalks back in New York, but a transatlantic journey, coupled with ideas of Maggie Cheung’s sensual performance in 1996’s Irma Vep, has made the Vaquera tone gentler. Now their big ruffles seem less campy, more tender. Their plaid skirts and schoolgirl jumpers feel like the clothes of teenage crushes, and their suiting is covered in professions of love. Even a hair clip reads YOU inside a jet black heart. The brand’s signature teddy, elongated into a dress, is now translucent and trimmed in white lace, an invitation to come closer, to see, and to be seen. “That fantasy really drove us,” said DiCaprio, and “we pushed ourselves to our limit.” Overdrive achieved.
1 March 2022
Backstage before the Vaquera show, designers Patric DiCaprio and Bryn Taubensee spoke about superstition and warding off evil. Their spring 2022 collection definitely banished any bad vibes. It wasn’t just that the models stomped with such fury you could practically feel the negativity evaporating from Cortlandt Alley, but that DiCaprio and Taubensee’s collection had a particular lightness.It might seem counterintuitive from the images. Sure there is plenty of black and tons of volume, but even the most gigantic pieces—see: the trash bag dress—had an ebullient buoyancy. Taubensee walked in a neon green lace veil that was so breezy she worried it would blow right off. A striped, Norma Kamali-esque jumpsuit had wings to catch the air and even thick denim shorts and jeans were cut ultra loose so that they danced around models’ hips. (The potential for a little upper tush exposure was high—and then, voilà, a pair of orange leggings came out with a heart cut right out of the backside. Sweet and kinky.)With the support of Dover Street Market Paris, Vaquera’s collections have become more viable for production. That’s not to say DiCaprio and Taubensee are designing with commerciality in mind—a safety pin slip dress took DiCaprio days to make, and he has the calloused fingertips to prove it. But they are fleshing out their offering with more dresses, more bralettes, more shorts, and more humor. The neon pieces and mock reflective tape are sure to inspire customers looking for a killer reemergence look, and for the more cherubic Vaquera kids there’s a genius new accessory in the form of an extra-long ruffled sash. In sequins and frills, it can be thrown over anything for a dash of cheeky fun. Positive vibes abound.
14 September 2021
A year in lockdown hasn’t dimmed the Vaquera designers’ flare for fashionable expression. Hopping on a Zoom, Claire Sullivan and Bryn Taubensee wore old tees with a camisole and a bra top layered over them, respectively, and Patric DiCaprio sported a vintage T-shirt from an old Jeremy Scott collection that read, rather pointedly, “Viva Avant Garde.”Fall marks their second season under the Dover Street Market umbrella and the Vaquera lifestyle is expanding; Nordstrom picked up the label, a development that they described as unexpected and entirely welcome. There’s without a doubt a new level of finesse to the new season’s vegan leather motorcycle jackets; they call them “real” pieces, ones they “couldn’t have done without Comme” (Comme des Garçons owns DSM).The collection at least partially takes its cues from the way the designers themselves are dressing. There are sweatshirts fused with bras and slip dresses, and the front panel of one skirt is embellished with a pair of satiny panties. A turtleneck collaged with found scraps retains the DIY spirit that has defined their work since the beginning, and a very large brassiere worn as a tank is an example of the proportion play that is another hallmark of their earliest collections.Performance was their loose theme for fall, inspired by the collective sensation of “waiting to go back out in the world, to go onstage.” That’s why you see an oversized tee that reads “Runway Star” and Tonya Harding–style leotards. Of course, performance is central to the Vaquera mystique and they’re hoping to be back at it by showtime in September, but the downtime of the last year has helped them to grow in other ways. You could never call them corporate. Still, they’re making a signature of lingerie dressing, a trend that’s been heating up over the last few seasons, and those vegan perfectos will find eager customers. New York’s perennial cool kids are growing up.
3 March 2021
This isn’t the only place you’ll see Vaquera’s spring collection photos. The designers are prepping a wheat-pasting campaign in New York City this week. Then the public will have the chance to deliver its opinion: scribbling graffiti across the models’ faces, tearing the posters down as keepsakes, or ignoring them as they hustle past, though there’s probably little chance of that.Fashion campaigns—from wheat-pasted posters to billboards and TV spots—are a lot more inclusive now than they were when the Vaquera designers, Patric DiCaprio, Claire Sullivan, and Bryn Taubensee, entered the scene in early 2017. Their proclivity and that of other designers like them for non-model models has trickled up through the industry. Three years later, if the Vaquera trio still identify as fashion outsiders, they’re certainly influential ones.Over the summer, that influence was certified. After hosting their fall show back in February, Dover Street Market added Vaquera to the roster of brands it supports through its Paris showroom slash incubator. DSM will help with production and handle all sales and distribution, “the backend stuff that takes us away from being creative,” as DiCaprio put it.The point of the arrangement is that with DSM handling the commercial side of the business, the Vaquera trio can focus on creativity. But the partnership has already impacted how they’re channeling that creativity.“Knowing they’re going to be there on that side helping us with sales was really inspiring, for me at least,” DiCaprio continued. “We were like, ‘Let’s make this skirt perfect and the fit really nice and make these fabrics really good so they look good in their showroom.’ ”Their new collection is a sort of codifying of the Vaquera ethos and aesthetic. Wearability has been emphasized without forsaking too much of their hold on weird. So side by side there are washed denim jeans cut to fit both guys and girls and a Little Bo Peep cosplay outfit in white canvas and croc-stamped vinyl. Mixing with twisted bankers stripe shirts and oversized suiting is a tutu explosion in an amorphous body-obscuring shape of the kind you might see on a Comme des Garçons runway. (DSM is owned by CDG.)“We were inspired by what we want to wear, what our friends are wearing, who we’re with,” Sullivan elaborated. “That’s so much of what Vaquera is: context, reference, culture.
What do you wear, what do I wear, how do we make it Vaquera?” In certain neighborhoods of New York this summer it wasn’t unusual to see women wearing their bed clothes on the street, one of the many impacts of months in lockdown. In the look book, that translates as innerwear as outerwear. What makes it Vaquera is that all genders sample the retro bra tops and the satin and lace teddies affixed to T-shirts. Coming soon to a wild posting near you.
28 September 2020
The Vaquera show almost didn’t happen for the usual reasons: not enough money or resources to pull it off. Last minute, an intrepid PR person and the generous retailers at Dover Street Market swooped in; influential international fashion troops were rallied, and together with unsuspecting Saturday shoppers, they witnessed a sort of guerrilla couture production, with models of many genders carrying old-fashioned number cards as they wove their way through the thick crowd.On Sunday morning, one of those influential international fashion types was heard calling Vaquera “the only good thing” she saw the day before. The story illustrates the dilemma of Vaquera’s Patric DiCaprio, Claire Sullivan, and Bryn Taubensee: They’re beloved and respected by those who matter as one of New York’s last bastions of cool, but they still struggle to pay the bills.Over the winter the frustrations of the business started piling up on top of all the general world crises—you name it, and it feels like it’s falling apart. At a gallery viewing of the collection (guerrilla shows are a thrill, but not good for picking up details), they said they’d all fallen into a bit of a depression. A new T-shirt put the sentiment best: “Wow, this is miserable,” it reads, and they say it’s resonated with all who’ve seen it. The Vaquera trio channeled that malaise into their new collection. It’s heavy on a sturdy cotton camouflage cut into voluptuous shapes and equally curvaceous black denim with Dr. Martens stomp marks—the bleach they stepped in turned their footsteps red. The clothes were touched with nihilism—see the lineup’s other tee which features the brand logo stamped out by a big red slash—but there was a debauched glee to pieces like the croc-stamped PVC bolero and skinny pants with bell-shaped gaiters strapped to ankles, a sort of we’re-all-dancing-on-the-lip-of-a-volcano-we-might-as-well-look-fabulous vibe. The Vaquera designers were thinking more commercially this season, incorporating easy-to-wear knits into the mix and...yada yada yada. It’s their sensitivity to the world and their circumstances that make them one of New York’s most compelling must-sees.
12 February 2020
Vaquera was the third act of New York Fashion Week’s first-ever three-act show, an experiment in economy and comradeship that united it with Section 8’s Akeem Smith and the more veteran Shane Gabier and Chris Peters of CDLM. The look that signaled Vaquera’s section was a baggy pair of pin-striped pants, glittering silver heels, and a white tee that read “In Loving Memory of New York.” Vaquera’s Patric DiCaprio, Claire Sullivan, and Bryn Taubensee, not yet 30 any of them, are officially jaded New Yorkers. At least they still have their ideals!“It’s mostly about being let down in different ways: on Valentine’s Day, by the fashion industry—by New York,” DiCaprio said before the show. Taubensee picked up the thread: “We’ve learned it’s empowering to be frustrated and disheartened. In this new collection, you’ll see more of the old Vaquera, where we’re just like, ‘Fuck it, let’s just do it.’”They went about that in their signature ways: deconstructing some items and supersizing the conventionality out of others. This season’s industry cameo came from designer André Walker, an icon of theirs, who wore a pair of chin-grazing blue pants with aplomb—no easy task. The Vaquera runway has always been as gender bendy as they come; here, there were boys in heels and boys in dresses and bare chests on both sexes.The models stormed down the runway at speed, looking fierce. But a close examination of the pictures the morning after indicates that, protests aside, the Vaquera trio are becoming more adept at what they might sneeringly call “commercial” pieces, the black denim especially. Of course, the “Fuck it” mentality is central to their appeal. They invite those who have lost touch with their own ideals to reconnect with them. Don’t let us down, Vaquera. Stay weird.CDLM, Vaquera, and Section 8 presented their Spring collections in a combined show.
10 September 2019
Domesticity was Vaquera’s theme for fall. Post-show, the designers said they noticed that people like them were staying home more—people like them being 20-somethings, kids practically, who should be going out, not staying in. “Everyone’s like, ‘Granny vibes for 2019,’” Patric DiCaprio said. “What’s that about?”Whatisthat about? Outsiders who’ve captured the attention of fashion’s insiders, DiCaprio and his Vaquera partners, Claire Sullivan and Bryn Taubensee, have come to the part of the trajectory in which they confront their ambitions. They want success. In fact, they said they spend most of their time not at home, but at their new studio. The work on the runway reflected that. The oddball models are still loping out, heads lolling like hipsters possessed, but the collection was elevated. Taubensee made a cameo in a starched button-down with built-in bra detailing that would’ve passed on establishment runways, and there were more striped shirts where that came from. Their tailoring, too, has evolved. See the cropped denim blazer, denim trouser skirt, and Peter Pan collar worn by Leah Hennessey, a performer currently costarring inSlashat MX Gallery.The trio hasn’t abandoned their beloved visual puns. There was a ruffled pillowcase dress, wallpaper brocades, silk curtain fringe, and a monogram that spelled out “WHY” on a towel top. Backstage, Taubensee likened the concept of home to a cradle for a person’s insecurities, while Sullivan called it a sanctuary. That kind of creative tension will keep Vaquera interesting as the three of them and their label come of age.
12 February 2019
For all their underground, avant-garde bona fides, Vaquera’s Patric DiCaprio, Claire Sullivan, and Bryn Taubensee are quite business-minded. Or at least they’re doing their darnedest to be. Small production runs keep their clever showpieces prohibitively expensive—for stores and for would-be customers. For Pre-Fall 2019, the trio’s first attempt at a pre-collection, they’ve distilled some of their earlier propositions into a capsule of clothes and accessories at prices their young followers can manage. “Our idea for pre-seasons,” DiCaprio said, “is to get the same energy into concise, commercial collections.”They went it about it here by designing fewer than a dozen silhouettes, some of them recognizable from past shows, and limiting themselves to just three materials: a cotton poplin, a dark-rinse denim, and a sweatshirt fabric. Dubbing this their “Garment Care season”—the designers love a theme—they affixed button-downs with dry cleaning slips, printed the back of hoodies with a Vaquera dry cleaners logo, and turned the little numbered paper tab you find on cleaned items into an identifying symbol à la Margiela’s famous four white stitches. The collection’s sock bag with its coin-purse clasp is another nod in the direction of Martin Margiela, who did something similar with a leather glove 20 years ago.Jean Paul Gaultier did a dry cleaner show back in 2002, but there’s no apparent through line between that collection and this. As they explained it, the origin of Vaquera’s “Garment Care” concept was straightforward enough. “Most of our clothes are dry-clean-only,” Sullivan said. “Resort will be filtered through something else.” For all the care their pieces may require, their charm lies in their DIY, make-do-and-mend vibes. Take their Pre-Fall hoodie. One side is longer than the other so they zip together not in a straight line, but in a squiggle which creates odd, curving volumes that elevate the erstwhile everyday piece. Going forward, unique details like that will be even more effective than a logo.
11 December 2018
There’s a saying in this industry: “Fashion is just like high school.” It came to mind at the entertaining Vaquera show today. To kick it off, designers Patric DiCaprio, Claire Sully, and Bryn Taubensee sent a young model sprinting through PS42M on the Lower East Side sporting sneakers, a denim mini, and a “power money fame” T-shirt. “It comes down to those three words,” DiCaprio said afterwards, sweating in an upstairs hallway. “Whether you’re chasing after it or rebelling against it.”It wasn’t clear if he was talking about the trio’s teenage years or their experiences trying to make it as designers in New York. Both worlds are a bitch to navigate—cliquish, competitive, cruel—but especially so for those who occupy an outsider position in the social landscape, which Vaquera more or less does. The establishment press pays them loads of attention, but they’ve yet to land the big e-commerce accounts they crave.The concept for the show, as they described it, was an ’80s high school infected with the supernatural. Picture a football pep rally crawling with zombies and vampires. Vaquera’s tendency to cast “real people,” not models, worked to its advantage here. Their motley crew lurched through the cafeteria in Team Vaquera sports jerseys and a stream of tweaked and twisted visual riffs on different high school uniforms: a science lab coat, a deconstructed cheerleader’s outfit, prom king and queen costumes in sweatshirt material.As usual, it was as gender-irreverent as it gets. Boys wore midriff-baring “poufs” and pumps with their football pads. Also as usual, Martin Margiela was a touchstone—the Vaqueras aced their fashion history course. A whistle bustier called to mind his famous glove top, and the football pads were evocative of all the pronounced shoulders the Belgian did back in the day, but especially Spring 2008’s linebacker proportions.Most high school horror stories end with tragedy. InHeathers, Christian Slater blows up the school. Further back,Carrieends in an epic conflagration. Vaquera’s take today ended with a graduation cap and gown. If it were an allegory—this reporter aced freshman-year English—we’d say those e-tailers are definitely going to come calling.
11 September 2018
Vaquera emerged on the New York fashion scene two years ago as a collective in the mold of Vetements with the DIY instincts of Miguel Adrover. They didn’t stay underground for long. Last June, shortly beforeThe Handmaid’s Talebecame a pop-culture phenomenon, they produced a collection with Hulu inspired by Margaret Atwood’s terrifying dystopia. Soon after that, they were selected as finalists for the CFDA/VogueFashion Fund prize, and subsequently became the target of Diet Prada, the self-anointed Instagram fashion police.No wonder Patric DiCaprio, David Moses, Bryn Taubensee, and Claire Sully took up the issues of doubt and faith for their new Fall collection. “It’s kind of like this up-and-down of feeling really good, then totally depressed, and the clothes are part of that trajectory,” said Taubensee. Happy or sad, they put on a brilliant show this afternoon at the Ukrainian National Home, pulling from iconography of the church (a grown-up’s christening gown), and the casino (a craps-table T-shirt dress), and sometimes mixing the two—see the showgirl leotard topped by a sliced-and-diced altar boy’s surplice. There are visual riches in their chosen subjects, and they plundered them: a papal miter in billiard felt; a pastor’s robe turned pouf dress; a “big-money button-down” spray-painted with a capital S, with the accompanying tie forming a dollar sign.The way they gave each look a clever name recalled Jean Paul Gaultier, who does the same at his Paris shows. The Vaquera foursome have their designer idols. Gaultier aside, they unabashedly claimed them in this collection tonight, stippling the faces of Vivienne Westwood, Adrover, Andre Walker, and Martin Margiela to white polo dresses made in collaboration with American Apparel. Walker, the least well known of the foursome, posted a photo of his look to his own feed in the hours after the show. “I’m sincerely floored,” he wrote. “You guys are the answer.”Turning their lively ideas into dollar signs seemed to be part of the subtext today. Moses and Sully wore hoodies that read “Vaquera’s Casino Resort” with “BIG MONEY” printed over it in a supersize font. They’re still blissfully DIY, but the work here was more ambitious and at times more deftly achieved than before. It’s a process, but they’re clearing enjoying themselves—and this show was a kick.
13 February 2018
Vaquera’s Patric DiCaprio, Bryn Taubensee, David Moses, and Claire Sully took up the issue of identity crises this season. The theme worked on multiple levels. Growing as they have from an underground Brooklyn label to a CFDA/VogueFashion Fund finalist, they’re experiencing their own identity crisis. Then there’s the country’s. They made that point with an oversize T-shirt featuring a sharpie drawing of Abraham Lincoln, who, they discovered on Google, is the world’s third most famous person after Barack Obama and you-know-who (no, not Voldemort). And don’t forget the New York Fashion Week situation: With four major brands skipping out for Paris, the New York season has felt a little sparse. Vaquera is a brand that could help fill the vacuum. Not because what they do has anything much in common with the dearly departed likes of Proenza Schouler and Rodarte, et al., but rather because they are thoughtful and energized.The foursome is part of a wave of New York labels rethinking show casting, enlisting their friends and hiring people off the street, and in the process making traditional model castings seem old-fashioned and out of touch. Today, their casting director, Walter Pearce, walked along with his mom, and overall there was an enlivening “let your freak flag fly” attitude to the runway crew. Vaquera’s clothes naturally share that sensibility. They work instinctually, but watching the show at the Church Street Boxing gym, one of the coolest locations of the week, it was clear that they’d marshaled their instincts to their theme. Surfer gear and executive realness represented either side of the identity crisis they were talking about, with rash guards and boardwalk souvenir tees on one side and exaggerated, out-of-all-proportion button-downs and repp ties on the other. Or they sent characters down the runway whose internal struggles manifested in twisted outfits: the beach babe whose bikini was made from casual Friday chinos, the corporation man who let it all hang loose.Now that they’ve got the fashion world’s attention, it’s time to start putting their ideas into production. In some ways, the ideas are the easy part. But team Vaquera is sanguine about their future. Messing with runway convention, the last model wore a bridal-white bathrobe. As Sully put it afterward, they’re “fresh for whatever’s next.”
12 September 2017
For Fall 2017, upstart label Vaquera—designed by Patric DiCaprio, David Moses, Bryn Taubensee, and Claire Sully—channeled its youthful DIY aesthetic into an exploration of classic American tropes. “This is all about the American dream, in a way,” said Taubensee. “It’s about the girl who loves Tiffany [& Co.], and about her going to the Tiffany store and dreaming.” In Vaquera’s world, we become the things we obsess over, so it’s no surprise that a Tiffany pouch came walking down the runway at one point; the dress, if you can call it that, was fastened to the nude model at the neck, shoulders, and behind via a thong.It probably doesn’t need pointing out, but this is not a brand concerned with subtlety. The show notes asked: “Why does everybody want to be a chef?” So out came a handful of white looks, inspired by a classic chef’s hat. A shirt with a lobster on a silver platter answered another question in the notes: “Would you like the lobster?” Elsewhere, the ironic take on Americana showed up in an American flag gown with a several-foot-long train that dragged the floor. On the more retail-friendly side were workwear-inspired ensembles. Highlights included Carhartt pants with thick suspenders and a cone-shaped bra, and a T-shirt that looked like it could have come from a hardware store,Vaqueraprinted on the front. Not for everyone, to be sure, but if last night’s audience—a mix of young arty types from New York’s downtown scene—is any indication, the designers know who they’re talking to.
13 February 2017