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When the first video of Elena Velez’s New York Fashion Week show made it onto my algorithm, I had to do a double take. As models clambered onto one another in a cesspit of dirt, grime and greasy mud, I was sure I was watching a snippet from the internet’s ‘The Gauntlet’ challenge, or the opening of an NSFW video you may find in another corner of the dark web.
It was provocative, messy, guttural and raw. A collection that made me squirm and slither in discomfort as I thought about the lengths those models would have to go to scrub the mud from under their nail beds and out of their pores.
For the uninitiated, Velez took a nondescript warehouse in Bushwick to stage her Spring/Summer 2024 collection. By the sordid setting, it’s clear that Velez took no note of seasonality. Or convention.
Or, even the ensembles her guests would sport for the show, which many report ranged from angelic whites to crips Thom Brownes. (All of which were reportedly left as freshly pressed and stain-free as they arrived, by some fashion miracle).
Credit: Instagram.com/@ssense
Similar to Balenciaga’s Spring/Summer 2023 collection, Velez had models dredge through layers of mud to showcase her latest offering. The presentation itself felt like a theatre of the absurd performance, continuing the theme set by Wiederhoeft to well and give audiences a show. But, beneath the layers of spectacle and provocation, was there something worth unearthing?
Velez wrote in her show notes that the collection, entitled ‘The Longhouse’, was a “creative interpretation of the reorganisation of contemporary society around feminine expressions of control and behavioural modelling”.
Perhaps a head-scratching, overly articulate explanation for a panoply of dark glamour, but extrapolated on her thesis: “What is contemporary female evil and why do we condescend to women by claiming its lack of existence?”
This archetype came to the forefront in inherently anarchist silhouettes. These aren’t the pieces the New York women want to wear to brunch—-though they undoubtedly will—these are the designs made for the apocalypse. Or, next year’s Burning Man all things considered.
Underpinned by a sense of resourcefulness and ultra violence, Velez presented a collection fit for the antagonist. Cotton pieces that moulded the body were slashed and sheared with great delight, revealing subversive undergarments that read “fed”.
There were the hallmarks of orthodox techniques through Velez’s tailoring or corsetry, but later in the collection the raw hems and frayed edges made it clear these weren’t Saville Row’s Sunday best.
Velez answered Troye Sivan’s question in The Idol—“When was the last truly f****** nasty, nasty, bad girl?” They’re all in Brooklyn, walking her show.
