New York Fashion Week spring - summer 2013: Proenza Schouler

NEW YORK --Proenza Schouler designers Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez showed their spring-summer 2013 collection on Thursday night. And it was the New York Fashion Week moment we’d all been waiting for.

The inspiration: Collage and the juxtaposition of random elements. Artist Gerhard Richter inspired the painterly jacquard tweeds.

Photos: New York Fashion Week celebrity sightings

The look: Visually arresting. Casual classics like denim vests, T-shirts and sleeveless dresses reworked using colorful patchworks of python and iguana. Red crocheted leather jackets and skirts with black contrast piping. Silk chiffon print dresses and skirts with studs sewn into the pleats to add movement. Photo prints collaged together with tweeds on a single dress, some of which had embroidery that brought to mind candy buttons. Vivid colors such as poppy red, aqua, tangerine and cobalt blue. Gladiator sandals and patchwork leather bags.

The scene: A raw space with crumbling walls just blocks away from the World Trade Center site. The perfect backdrop for the designers’ graphic color explosion.

The verdict: Mind-blowingly cool. When it comes to innovative materials and techniques, there is no one in American fashion who comes close to Jack and Lazaro. They built on the foundation of last season’s experiment with a boxy, oversized silhouette, playing with fragments of images, colors and textures that flew by like so many pixels in our visually- overloaded digital world.

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