Manhattan's Manic Style

Against the backdrop of the Big Apple’s most frenzied borough and its ever-changing skyline, fashion pulses, beats, morphs, and morphs again. Change is in the very nature of fashion, observes Wednesday Martin.

- Wednesday Martin

In the city that never sleeps, fashion, too, has insomnia. “Being fashionable in New York can be a blood sport, especially now that designers are feeling the pressure to make their clothes immediately available after runway shows,” observes Bob Morris, frequent contributor to the New York Times’ Styles section and Town & Country magazine. “Who gets her hands on the signature Proenza Schouler skirt or Marc Jacobs dress before it gets into the stores all those months later?” Like so many things in Manhattan — spots in elite kindergartens, getting into Stacey’s 8:30 a.m. Soul Cycle class, the Hamptons summer beach pass quest — it’s a race.

Fashion’s ‘time is of the essence’ clause is not the only pressure we feel. In a new era, there’s change to the nth power, as the biggest rules, ones that guided us for years, are being aggressively rewritten.

“Although the great taste makers like certain fashion glossies remain very powerful, in the internet era, bloggers, celebrity trend setters and even street style have all challenged the gatekeepers’ traditional authority,” explains the Columbia University sociologist and New York City nightlife expert Victor Corona, Ph.D. In this changed-up ecosystem, Instagram can make or break a designer, or create a star or trend we’ve never imagined, and haute fashion purloins from small designers, the girl on the street, Insta feeds, even H&M.

And there is no single voice or crisp clarion call. Fragmented and decentralised, anxious about its own future and mission, fashion now has a hectic, harried pace and arguably an unprecedentedly unchartered course. The rules are more confusing than ever. Yet for the urban, urbane sets from Mumbai to Manhattan, opting out is simply not an option.

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