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It’s easy to forget that Khaite’s sought-after ribbed bustier with the sweetheart neckline, or its famous cashmere cardigan-and-bra combo worn by Katie Holmes along the streets of Manhattan a few years back, doesn’t belong to a house founded in—I don’t know—2003? What designer Catherine Holstein has achieved in just a few short years—eight, to be accurate—is nothing short of remarkable, having created a label which has attracted infinite sartorial street style moments and thus steeped the young house in a nostalgia that feels so warm, so familiar and well beyond its years.
After winning the American Womenswear Designer of the Year award at the CFDA Fashion Awards two years in a row—and opening a must-visit, cement-trowelled flagship boutique in SoHo, New York just last year—all eyes were on Holstein this Fall/Winter season: What would she do next?
The answer laid somewhere between packing show attendees into an enormous black box at Chelsea Piers and taking her modern minimalism approach to mob wife aesthetic heights: think leather, fur and satin along a dimly-lit runway, save for a rogue spotlight here and there.
“[This season, I] explored the dilapidation of a fallen drape quite literally, sculpting it on the body and letting the shape fall away,” Holstein says of her FW24 collection titled The Unfolding. “It’s quite cathartic to allow things to release, to fall, and to stay in it. I found myself seduced by this notion as a practice.”
Staying true to its staple palette—black, white and cream, with the occasional slate grey and olive green thrown in for good measure—the brand sent authoritative leather cigarette pants, some with a cummerbunds, others with drawstrings, storming down the runway. Leather coats came in every iteration imaginable: cropped boleros, long and burgundy, biker-style, with fur collars, without. Draping—with a mind of its own, its seems—was applied to eveningwear with organza tops and skirts intricately sculpting the respective models’ bodies. (Read: due to the gauzy nature of the fabric, no too looks ever fell the same. While it’s not particularly wearable, it’s… art?)
In her show notes, Holstein talked about “heritage,” again something that should be somewhat foreign to an eight-year-old brand. Almost like the idea of writing a memoir in your twenties. But, somehow, we know that Holstein is the exception to the rule. The Khaite store in SoHo has become an almost tourist attraction for any stylish, in-the-know woman visiting the city. Holstein has proven to be something special. Yes, Rome wasn’t built in a day, but in a fast-paced world, who says nostalgia can’t be built in a few short years?
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