Trager Delaney (Q9374)
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Trager Delaney is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Trager Delaney |
Trager Delaney is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Ever since Kim Trager and Lowell Delaney launched their label two years ago, Trager Delaney collections have been premised on some twisty, made-up narrative, usually something like what Roger Corman might have come up with if he was tripping balls one day and decided it'd be fun to edit together a mash-up ofThe French ConnectionandHeathers.This season, making their catwalk debut, Trager and Delaney played things quite a bit straighter, taking Russia as a jumping-off point for a collection that was very much about wearable clothes, and color. The Constructivist influence was evident not only in the palette and the Mayakovsky-esque blue-and-white print but also in the way that slashes of color and shape were engineered into the patterns of some of the long dresses. Perhaps the pared-down ethos of Constructivism also inspired this season's simplifications: The emphasis here was on clothes that were wearable and rather matter-of-fact, from a puckered silk seersucker halter dress to a cropped leather jacket tied up in a seemingly offhand manner. There were some flourishes of the totally unexpected, though—like the micro print based on Trager's experience of Spanish molecular gastronomy. Thumbs up to that: Though some additional mainstreaming of the Trager Delaney shapes seems in order, you wouldn't want this duo to play ittoostraight.
13 September 2014
It is helpful to think of Trager Delaney's London-based designers Kim Trager and Lowell Delaney as crack anthropologists. They are keen students of people, and they want their clothes to tell those people's stories. Or, more accurately, they like to create rococo tales of what those stories might be. Case in point, this season's nicely observed take on English council estate aesthetics, with their track suits, big tees, and sexed-up Saturday night dresses, which Trager and Delaney spun into aScarface-inspired yarn about a poor boy who's made it big, and so now he and his girl are getting into some conspicuous consumption. This was a collection very much about what people with nothingthinkrich people have—smoking jackets, red merino furs trimmed in stingray gold python, velvet track suits lined in organza. More than a few actually rich women are going to want to own those python-trimmed coats and velvet track suits, the latter of which feature leg-length zips that open to reveal skin winking through that sheer organza. And that ratifies Trager and Delaney's larger point here, which is that—vacated of their class connotations—lots of so-called naff looks are actually pretty awesome. Get with the bling, people. Get with the bling.
6 March 2014
First things first: Kim Trager and Lowell Delaney are nuts. Totally bonkers. One hundred percent crazy. Crazy like a fox, you might say: The byzantine tales this London-based duo spin to inspire their collections reveal quite a bit of cunning, in that the tales allow them to integrate a lot of disparate ideas into their clothes. Clothes that are, by the way, executed with an extraordinary amount of polish. For their third collection, Trager and Delaney concocted a story of an orphan in Germany who eventually finds her way into a shady scene in L.A., and then somehow Aristotle Onassis and Majorca are involved. But never mind. Pieces like a jacket with rubberized yarn heat-pressed onto laser-cut suede didn't require a backstory to be compelling. Meanwhile, the sixties-style shifts had a real grace, while the brand's low-slung trousers and cropped vest tops captured, in the most exact way possible, the look and attitude of the mid/late nineties, without aping any one reference too precisely. Tie-front blouses and matador-inspired cape jackets managed a similar trick, conjuring Spanish Majorca. The unifying elements here were the designers' graphic application of color and their zeal for texture; even the simplest materials were well chosen, like the meltingly soft suede. And if you wanted a clue to the crazy, you only had to look at Trager Delaney's loopy seasonal print, a brand signature: Somewhere in there, a girl was coming of age. Aristotle Onassis was involved somehow. It doesn't matter.
28 October 2013