Thakoon (Q7985)
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Thakoon is a fashion house from BOF.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Thakoon |
Thakoon is a fashion house from BOF. |
Statements
New York Fashion Week answers the same questions every year in slightly different ways. What’s going to be the silhouette of the season? Who are the breakout designers? Are the hemlines pointing toward a recession? Thakoon Panichgul isn’t focused on providing the most current answers but instead on refining his “feminine tomboy” point of view. “More than ever, for me, I’m feeling that being focused is better,” he says. “I think it’s about honing in on the silhouette, the fabrications, and the sensibility, instead of giving too much variety.”I wonder what that feels like as a designer, to be in a mindset of improving on what’s already in your oeuvre rather than trying to add something new. “It’s refreshing, because I’ve always been a product person. In any other creative industry, whether it’s cars or furniture, you refine and make it better and better,” he says. “There doesn’t need to be newness that’s a departure from the last season over and over.”Given that framing, the clothes this season feel open to a wide range of customers rather than additions to the Thakoon woman’s closet. Striped shirts, blousy shorts, and trapeze tops and dresses could slide into any of the collections Thakoon has shown since relaunching his brand in 2019. But he introduced a quilted striped jacket (or perhapsreintroducedis a better term, as a similar style was in his first-ever collection), bandana prints, and a cool top and dress that combine bows and cutouts down the front. Turns out there are endless ways to transform cotton poplin.
10 September 2022
Often designers present their collections as an embodiment of a hyper-specific inspiration. For instance, you could theoretically build an entire collection around the premise of visiting the Scottish Highlands in the 18th century, or a quilt spied at a flea market 20 years ago. But at the end of the day, the customer isn’t often aware of the inspiration when they go shopping; they just want good clothing.For spring 2022, Thakoon Panichgul focused on making garments rather than a collection with a deep backstory. “If you look at the entirety of the items we are offering, they do connect and make a theme, but we are focused on making each item sing,” Panichgul said. The uniting force was simple and broad. He wanted to make clothes that offered “a bohemian way to be minimal.”Using fabrics like eyelet and cotton poplin in a muted color palette of white, black, blue, and one abstract print, Panichgul made a collection of throw-on-and-go clothes. White shirt dresses, trapeze tank tops, boxer-ish shorts—these are clothes to live in rather than to dress up in, ideal for those who are searching for serenity in the coming months.
16 May 2022
The wool-knit bouclé wrap coat that opens Thakoon Panichgul’s look book is evocative of the way we live now. It’s cut like a bathrobe, but it’s safe for the bodega “if you need to run to the deli for milk.” the designer says. Once upon a time, pajamas on the street were a punch line; in our new work from home reality, they’re not an uncommon sight. Panichgul designs his direct-to-consumer line with an eye to his customers’ day-to-day needs. His e-commerce site provides him with a constant stream of data; when the sweatsuits drop, he reports, they sell out quickly.This collection is targeted to the department stores that came calling when “real clothes for real people” started trending amidst the pandemic. It’s a step above his DTC offering, but it retains the lounge-y aesthetic that so many of us have adopted during the lockdowns of the last year. The sweatpants are overlaid with a patchwork grid of poplin, and the sweatshirt comes cropped with eyeleted sleeves. A close-up view of the pantsuit reveals that the edges are piped, yes, just like a pair of pajamas.A couple of years ago Panichgul launched a multi-platform side project.Homme Girlsis a magazine and an Instagram account for women who like to wear men’s clothes, and it’s attracted enough attention that retailers have been inquiring about a Homme Girls label. He’s designed a few pieces, including a capsule collection for the London department store Browns, and the sartorial POV of the endeavor has rubbed off on some key pieces here—that wool bouclé robe coat and a more tailored coat in a sharp but cozy shade of turmeric included.
9 February 2021
When Thakoon Panichgul reemerged last fall it was with a new direct-to-consumer line of essentials at easy-on-the-wallet prices.The khaki, pin tuck, pleat-front trousers with a high waist and straight leg were a hit around theVogueoffices; the $135 price tag was hard to beat. The collection was available strictly on his e-comm site and at a small store on Bleecker Street that has become something of a DTC row. Panichgul’s department store days were over. But the pandemic has had a way of changing things.In the six months since they closed their doors, shuttering a season’s worth of merchandise inside, department stores have had to rethink their strategies, just like everyone else. Women are buying less, and what they’re shopping for has changed. You know, special occasion dresses are out and sweatpants are in. Panichgul’s “real clothes for real people” concept started to look good to the old guard stores, and conversations ensued, but the DTC price structure of his new business doesn’t work with the traditional wholesale model.Instead he’s designed an additional collection for spring 2021 to be wholesaled to those department stores, one that sits somewhere between his elevated basics and his former runway label. The offering will look more familiar to shoppers of the new Thakoon than to the old Thakoon, with its emphasis on tracksuits and jumpsuits and easy suiting, but there are a couple of pretty printed georgette dresses that will delight his longtime fans. One of them is an above-the-knee wrap dress with short sleeves evoking a kimono; it seems particularly apt for our new stay-at-home lives.
14 September 2020
Thakoon Panichgul’s new collection was for sale on his e-commerce site an hour after tonight’s presentation, and well before the pictures you see here onVogueRunway went up. The in-season, direct-to-consumer model the designer has lately adopted takes not just department stores out of the picture, but reporters, too. Or it would, save for the fact that the crowd that came to see the video installation and mini show was made up of industry types, not shoppers—though surely there’s some overlap.The designer’s Wooster Street store opened last September, and his e-commerce operation went live shortly before that. Panichgul put those five-plus months of learning into this 10-look offering. (He makes similarly sized drops about every two weeks.) “In the past, I relied so much on retailers, but what’s beautiful now is that feedback comes directly from customers,” he said. Department stores wanted dresses from Thakoon; shoppers, it turns out, wanted other things, which is why you’ll see a focus on separates and a handful of riffs on the trench.Though the emphasis is strongly on sportswear, Panichgul isn’t doing basics. The trench is patchworked with a Dutch floral or sliced at the shoulders and lined with a scarf print. His striped shirtdress features a built-in floral sarong wrap, and the waistband of a button-front skirt peels away to reveal a contrast print. These are all ideas Panichgul explored in Thakoon 1.0. Though the spirit is similar, Thakoon 2.0 is significantly lower-priced than his original main line, more in the range of his contemporary label, Addition. Longtime fans will be jazzed to learn that they can have a charming red and sky blue printed silk dress with an adjustable neck scarf for a song.
10 February 2017
Fashion editors who may have initially bristled at the location listed on the invitation forThakoon’s Fall show (Empire Stores, a newish waterfront development in Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood) needn’t have worried: The view was worth it. With a backdrop of the East River and the Manhattan skyline at around sunset, Thakoon Panichgul sent out a collection—his first with new business partners since taking last season off—rooted in what he said was an appreciation for the French artist Jean Dubuffet’s nontraditional standards of beauty, and what he called the “raw glamour” of Peter Lindbergh’s 1990s fashion editorials forVogue. (Timely, considering Lindbergh’s upcomingKunsthal Rotterdam exhibition.) This translated into some understated chantilly lace eveningwear, darkly romantic butterfly-print dresses, and a lot of layering of traditional fall staples—occasionally to an almost absurdist level, in the manner of someone attempting to duck an airline baggage allowance by wearing all of their outerwear at once.The show’s physical invitation—a Walkman and cassette tape—may have been a nod to what in the tech world might as well be ancient history, but everything Panichgul is doing from a business perspective is decidedly devoted to the future; right down to the booklets that the brand distributed with scannable codes to enable special content, behind the scenes footage, and product information. In addition to new investors, the designer has a show-now-buy-now model not unlike what Tom Ford and Tommy Hilfiger are launching. The somewhat grungy, 1990s vibes of the collection were perhaps unexpected from a designer best loved for sweet cocktail shifts, but there’s nothing like sales to show which way the wind is blowing: Many of the 31 runway looks are already available for purchase.
8 September 2016
For his Spring 2016 collection,Thakoon Panichgulfilled his front row with It-girl artists (Langley Fox Hemingway, Phoebe Collings-James) and a smattering of actresses who like to align themselves with a certain artistic sensibility (Bella Heathcote, Christina Ricci,Jessica Alba), and really, who better than the very fetching and creatively inclined to celebrate what the designer called a vision of the “New Bohemia”?For Thakoon, that New Bohemia will be tie-dyed: From the bleached, lightweight denim to the slim silk slip dresses printed with a grunge grid to the crinkled chiffon, evidence of the hippie-favored coloring technique was everywhere on his runway. And what, the designer proposed, do bohemians love more than tie-dye? Wearing their pajamas, of course. Out came all manner of elegant attire for sleep enthusiasts: seemingly Julian Schnabel–inspired chambray robe coats and scoop-hemmed micro-shorts (longer in the center, mimicking the hem of a sleep shirt) in pale shades of robin’s-egg blue with trim crimson piping or pure white terry cloth, all worn with immediately covetable, comely flat sandals that were halfway between a huarache and a gladiator. As for wearing your pajamas out on the town, when you’re busy being creative, who has time for clothes? Well, actresses do, of course, and the most winning takeaways came in the sleekly crisp, bicolored broderie anglaise dresses—just the thing for a Cannes photo call. (There’s plenty of time to divulge your artistic leanings at the press conference straight after.)
13 September 2015
Thakoon Panichgul, like Marc Jacobs before him, is consolidating his signature and little sister collections. "It's the way retailers have been selling them, side by side," he said by way of explanation. Resort is the first time Panichgul gave his high- and lower-priced lines the same overall message, so he felt it was important to really dig into what both offerings have stood for in the past. It meant that what he presented today had the feeling of a greatest hits collection. It also looked just plain great. There's truly something to be said for not asking a designer to split his attention among multiple brands.On the upper end, he did some fabulous party dresses, including a low-cut iris-print number on a navy background that has been a best-seller before in other colors, and a black-and-white long-sleeve version of the same motif that wasn't a dress at all, but a clingy bodysuit and light-as-air asymmetric-hem skirt. On the lower end were the unique cotton shirts that Panichgul has made his trademark, this time trussed up with lacing details. In the middle, he explored novel denim shades (a blue so light it was almost white) and silhouettes (a strapless minidress), and went to town with his knits. These ranged from a chunky tunic dress with fringe that gave it a poncho vibe to generously proportioned twinsets (a real buy now/wear now November treat). Best of all was a black-and-white striped piqué dress inset with lace.
4 June 2015
In these early days of the Fall season, many designers are still thinking along the 1970s lines that were so prevalent for Spring. Even New York's biggest boosters would have to admit that its runways sometimes have a tendency to look a lot like Paris and Milan's did six months ago. So it was satisfying to see that Thakoon Panichgul had set about the task of proposing a new proportion. The lean, mid-calf dresses with wispy hems he layered over fine-gauge knits sprung from a nostalgia on Panichgul's part for the early 1990s, he said. The collection's rich prints and textures, including one especially luminous tapestry velvet, took their cues from 19th-century dandies: Backstage, Panichgul mentioned Oscar Wilde and his alter ego Dorian Gray.Swirled together, those starting points produced bohemian vibes, but ones that felt unencumbered by overly familiar retro associations. On the contrary, a red mock turtleneck with lace insets below the shoulders and the black V-neck tank dress slipped over it looked light and effortless. Panichgul adapted the same generally narrow silhouette for evening. A long-sleeve plunge-front dress dripping in shining sequins was one of the collection's standouts.Panichgul's distinctive cotton shirting—with cutouts at the seams or extra-long tails for twisting into a knot—provided a sturdy, serious counterpoint to the floaty dresses. Ombré or color-blocked wool coats and vests added texture and warmth, as did the shearling sashes he continued from Pre-Fall. But a little more attention to outerwear wouldn't have gone amiss. That fact was rammed home when the wind coming off the Hudson River on this particularly bitter day almost knocked you over leaving the West 37th Street venue.
15 February 2015
Thakoon Panichgul's brand turned 10 this year; he celebrated with a capsule collection for Barneys back in October. With that experience not far in his rearview mirror, he approached Pre-Fall not so much thematically, but rather, he said, by working on his label's "codes." A decade in, the Thakoon brand stands for hybrids and classic American sportswear rendered unexpected with subtle and not-so-subtle tweaks. Cotton shirts that might be missing one sleeve or finished with a flourish of extra fabric to tie around the neck. Sweaters needle-punched with graphic panels of lace. A dress that does day/night double duty. This season, the collection had a rich, textural flair: Jacquards were inspired by mosaic tiles, oversize tweeds came with rows of yarn fringe, and a paisley was over-dyed with a black floral. The mood was more bohemian than romantic, a sensibility accentuated by the boxy, boyish ribbed knit pants—as close to pj's as you can get and still leave your house—and men's leather slippers lined in shearling. There's a risk in removing the "everydayness" from what were once basics. But if the asymmetrical hem and contrast lining on a silk dress were a tweak or two too far, more often than not Panichgul's hybrids were winning.
16 December 2014