Duckie Brown Fall 2009 – New York Fashion Week

Duckie Brown’s Fall/Winter 2009 collection looked like a lineup of young boys getting ready for their first snow of the winter. No, these boys weren’t headed for a mountainside sports trip. They were headed for a rendezvous in the local woods for a snowball fight, gleefully pulling turtlenecks or parkas over their faces like ninja masks, and piling on their fathers’ too-large coats and too-long dress pants, fully protected against the cold save for an eye-slit.

Label designers Stephen Cox and Daniel Silver updated these looks for this line, ditching your father’s hand-me-downs with well-tailored suits and jackets. The designers also decided to throw in whimsical accessories as a humorous paean to those youthful snowbound days.

Unfortunately, they went too far. For example, two icons of youth snow clothing – pompon knit caps and blanket scarves – were blown up to ridiculous proportions. Gigantic orange pompons in particular sat like exclamation points atop the models’ heads, distracting from the muted tones of the rest of the line.

Orange wax trousers and gloves resembled leftover snowboarding gear, which clashed with the muted dark colors of the rest of the collection. The less successful items in the line similarly stuck out like sore thumbs: two dog-walking coats looked like ill-fitting old patchwork jackets, and a patent leather trench coat and a solitary pair of bicep-high quilted leather gloves shifted the humor to puzzling absurdity.

Ultimately these flourishes derailed the show. How does a classy looking camel houndstooth suit and jacket stand out with an oversized scarf obscuring the view?

Photo Gallery: Duckie Brown Fall 2009 – New York Fashion Week
all photos by Kwai Chan / Meniscus Magazine