VFILES Runway 9 and the People Who Actually Believe in Clothes

New York Fashion Week produces two parallel events that have very little to do with each other. One is the official calendar—the big houses, the front rows, the styling that will migrate slowly through retail until you can buy a diluted version at a mall in three years. The other is whatever’s happening at the edges, where the designers are younger and stranger and less interested in the opinion of department store buyers.

VFILES Runway 9 belonged firmly to the second category. The show at the Barclays Center was the kind of thing that actually justifies the phrase "fashion week"—loud, disorganized in the good way, full of clothes that had no interest in being wearable in any conventional sense. Designers Junjie Yang, Christian Stone, and Louis Pileggi sent things down the runway that felt more like propositions than garments: shapes that didn’t resolve into silhouettes, colors that competed rather than coordinated, constructions that suggested someone had asked "why not?" at every available opportunity.

The room reflected the show. Jessie J, Offset, Joey Bada$$, Yung Lean, Ty Dolla $ign, Dapper Dan, Tinashe, Brooke Candy, Lizzo, Carmen Carrera, Slick Rick—this was not a room full of industry people protecting their investments. It was something more like a scene: people who care about what the margins of fashion are doing before the margins become the center and then become a fast-fashion knockoff.

I’ve always had more patience for this end of fashion than for the prestige version—the part where it’s still slightly chaotic, where the clothes are expressing something rather than packaging it. VFILES has been good at holding that space open. Runway 9 looked like another edition of that argument, made at full volume.