The audience for Sandy Liang’s spring show assembled on the concrete steps outside Abrons Arts Center on Grand Street, looking representative of the brand’s ethos. This is true of many fashion shows—designers tend to invite celebrity fans and devoted customers—but at Liang’s it felt especially palpable that these were the people her clothes were for. And as well-dressed as the audience was, the models, with their pin-straight hair and smoky eye makeup, still stood out as the coolest girls at the party.
Liang was inspired by the 1975 movie Picnic at Hanging Rock (the plot is not germane to the clothes, just know that the main cast wears white, eyelet, turn-of-the-century dresses), as well as Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette (“every collection there’s a little bit of that,” Liang said), and Formula 1, which she got into during the pandemic. “We had a lot of fun layering all that,” Liang said. I walked away from the show remembering looks that felt plucked from an early-2000s music video—one model sauntered in a bedazzled cropped tank and low-slung pants—but the dressier pieces spoke to the highly feminine, dare I say, cottagecore, influences.
It was a wearable collection. Anyone in the audience could have been wearing any of the looks (yes, including the blue coat with just eyelet undies underneath), and I wouldn’t have batted an eyelid. You had the Liang staples: school skirts, pinafores, a fleece vest. But Liang went a little out of her comfort zone this season to create new formalwear that was more intricate than what she’s done before. Take several white pieces consisting of patchwork eyelet or the deconstructed top that was half white tank, half seafoam green ruffled taffeta. The final look was reminiscent of ’80s prom dresses, also in that light shade of blue-green, with an asymmetrical shoulder detail, layered over a black printed tank top. Lest anyone think Liang is getting too prissy, most of the looks were paired with Salomon shoes. It’s a high-low juxtaposition familiar to anyone who knows how to get to Dimes Square.
