There’s a chapter in our upcoming book, The New Luxury, that speaks on the idea of “the influencer jetstream.” It’s this notion that in a post-Tumblr, post-Instagram world, the proliferation and homogenization of taste is happening at a rapid and massive scale.
Suddenly, whatever the hotspots are in Paris and New York can change on a whim depending on if your favorite influencer’s favorite designer’s second cousin decides to open up a Moroccan tiki bar in the Marais or in some previously undiscovered corner of Bushwick. It’s this kind of energy that Ronnie Fieg has channeled with KITH, whether he’s launching a Tommy Hilfiger collaboration on the private Caribbean island of Mustique or a Coca-Cola collab in Waikiki. Wherever he’s at, it’s somewhere
FOMO-inducing.
That seemed to be the vibe at KITH’s latest fashion show, held at Cipriani’s massive event space in downtown Manhattan. The Italian Renaissance-style great hall served as the backdrop for KITH Air, a projection-mapped show themed after traveling to three locales: an arid desert, a verdant Parisian day spent underneath the Eiffel Tower, and the Swiss Alps.
Whereas last year’s KITH Park featured intricate sets and a moving set of bleachers, KITH Air honed the sense of spectacle to let the clothes get more shine. Like KITH’s other fashion shows, it presented the drops being released for the rest of the year. There’s the Fall 1 collection that features plenty of technical outerwear from Japanese water-resistant cotton to Turkish stretch twill, and covetable sneakers like KITH-exclusive New Balance 990 V2s and 997s. Pieces that especially stood out were
KITH’s licensed collabs with media entities like Vogue and Disney to labels like Def Jam Records.
But this time, the partnerships took a bit of a backseat to the universe Fieg and company have built. Not that there’s a shortage of cool collabs — Fieg teased products with RHUDE, Ksubi, Clarks, and ASICS — but with his fourth fashion show, Fieg also wants to exhibit how he’s evolved along with his customers and the market.
A brand specializing in sneakers and streetwear doing a fashion show seems par for the course now, but Fieg was one of the early adopters who saw those worlds melding early on (duh, he has a shop-in-shop at Bergdorf Goodman). KITH Air is Fieg’s earnest attempt at taking his label to a higher level. After all, if Fieg’s co-sign helped build hype around Coca-Cola products and Versace gear, then why shouldn’t he hold his own brand to the same standards?