Kenneth Nicholson found inspiration where few do: in the typical corporate office. His spring show was held in a building in the Financial District, and the door to the runway was labeled “Kenneth Nicholson Enterprises” with a generic globe logo. Sounds of clanging keyboards and printers welcomed guests, before the show started with a soothing recording of someone saying, “Kenneth, wake up.” As in, “you’re going to be late for work, Kenneth.” Then a model emerged in a white silk pajama shirt and boxer shorts. The pajama theme continued for a few looks, and then, abruptly, the models were dressed for work in three-piece suits, ties, and shirts with signed receipts attached to the pockets.
Some of the looks were incredibly literal to 20th-century office life, from a classic three-piece suit to a flirty blue collared dress that would have made Joan Holloway happy. That’s not what you expect from Nicholson, who is known for romantic, directional clothing for all genders, but the sharp tailoring was nice, as were the whimsical touches like receipts.
The third-quarter of garments—a series with falling stock graphs and Bitcoin logo prints, T-shirt dresses with words like sentient and crash—felt like they were grasping toward a bigger statement about our current economic anxiety. Backstage, Nicholson said that wasn’t the original intention, nor was the collection a commentary on the return-to-office debate. “It’s funny, because we were developing this collection for nine months. At the end of it, I had this epiphany that it really felt like an allegory for where we are now,” he said.
Maybe I was searching for that topical meaning because of Nicholson’s talent for subversion. Indeed, the garments that leaned into that gift were the most compelling. A print made to look like redacted classified documents was interesting as a bias-cut slip dress and as a utilitarian jumpsuit. Similarly, a pair of pants with keys jangling down the side like a tracksuit stripe, with a top made to resemble a backward, inside-out polo shirt, was an interesting interpretation of a janitor’s uniform. (A similar collared dress in camel also worked well; a kicky twist on the 1950s secretary.) There’s not a lot that’s romantic about cubicles and hot-plate coffee, but whimsy is what people look to Nicholson for.
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