NY Fashion Week: ØDD's Explores Gender Ambiguity

The �DD show, which preceded the official launch of Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week, featured monochromatic highlights and pops of pastel and burnt sienna. Attendees sat in the two-rowed venue - many in black and graphic prints - sipping on champagne? (Where was my glass? That's what you get for fighting Fashion Week traffic without a car service.) A remix of "Faded" by ZHU and Odesza played the entire show while Adriano Clemente's light installation illuminated models.

The show started with a white and black jacket and short number, featuring symmetric lines and dashes in a pattern called Eros Poplin. Pushed up sleeves ballooned out with the look completed by a pair of black wide-strapped sandals. Shades of tame orange and periwinkle infiltrated the first few garments. More graphic black and white printed shirts, pants and jacket patchwork entered the runway, and I began sensing a trend based on the graphic black and white bags previously shown at Jack Spade.

Flowtastic (that's flow and fantastic) shirts complimented monochromatic short looks. Relaxed shoulder shirts contrasted structural and sleek jackets. Two black outerwear looks incorporated double pleating at the hemline. One blazer, shorter crop, and one car coat, longer crop (naturally). Both outerwear pieces utilized the sleek look of shawl collars to add to the Asian-influenced silhouettes.

Standout pieces included a gray/heliotrope shirt and pant with one leg sewn using the white and black lined and dashed fabric. Another standout was an oversized drop shoulder shirt in gray, paired with gray double hem shorts. The shirt was slightly longer in the back than the front. Monochromatic and very wearable, I'd just buy the shirt slightly less oversized. A third key piece from this collection was the black, heliotrope and range leather bomber. Styled with the white and black Eros Poplin shirt and leather wrap shorts, this look screamed, "Meet me on the Lower East Side, we're going out."

�DD is a fashion retailer and styling house with a full private label collection. The store/brand's about statement reads, "The store empowers bold men and women, as well as those who toe the line of gender ambiguity." The runway show embraced that motto, featuring models with all types of hair and features. Both men and women walked with long hair, short hair or almost no hair, styled to embody the brand's motto - to stay nonconformist and be just a bit �DD.

The program notes from �DD's show included a quote from American existential psychologist and philosopher, Rollo May. "The pleasure of sex is described by Freud and others as the reduction of tension; in eros, on the contrary, we wish not to be released from the excitement but rather to hang on to it, to back in it, and even to increase it. The end toward which sex points is gratification and relaxation, whereas eros is a desiring, longing, a forever reaching out, seeking to expand." How �DD.

�DD pieces are available online at the store's e-commerce site and in New York City at the label's flagship store on the Lower East Side:
164 Ludlow Street
New York, NY 10012
www.�DD-style.com