Press
New York, NY - On Thursday, September 5th, Women’s History Museum showcased their Spring/Summer 2025 Ready-To-Wear collection titled “Indestructible Doll Head” at 201 W 13th Street in Manhattan consisting of 27 looks.
The city births new gods, already half-surrendered with scaffolding for ribcages, clothed in permanent grime and jilted, vacancies left awry. They walk among us, noticing our faded scars, pulling on our chains innocently, testing meaning, softly untangling blame and prophecy. Freedom chokes, the Subways scream, coming to a halt while the birds laugh, remembering the feeling of a weathered palm, being held, two degrees from oblivion. We walk among them, whispering in cigarette smoke something about the bridge and how it crosses us from the inside and makes us want to change the song playing. Over and over, a red echo, a blue flame, a thousand wicks lit for everything we longed for, everything we wanted to become, along the way. The rearview burns and illuminates the cracks, clothed in the word “shattered,” the gods see the martyrs they abandoned, glowing.
For their SS25, Women’s History Museum continues to explore themes of anthropomorphism as induced by New York City’s grinding landscape. New Yorkers are a breed of their own, hardened by circumstance, crucified on crosses made of their own dreams, they not only endure but they become. It is the latter state of being that WHM seeks to give form to this season, simultaneously illustrating the duality innate to their chosen environment and its vestigial tenderness that is often overlooked.
The act of getting dressed comes to play a unique role in the lives of New Yorkers, clothes function as both armor and love language, shielding and revealing the wearer to those they seek to pull into their respective orbits. The idea of clothing in turn is also then challenged as it comes to transcend function itself, becoming a conflicted instinct towards exhibitionism and the urge to hide simultaneously. Utilizing materials like broken glass, shark teeth, skunk and printed fur, hosiery and coins, WHM frees clothing from its traditional confines in a primal exhale. What it feels like to be seen, overlooked, and understood compounds an emotional landscape, one that is full of threads, stitches in the margins like notes we keep for our future selves to read later.
WHEN: Thursday, September 5, 2024, 8PM EST
WHERE: 201 W 13th Street, NY, NY 10011
SHOW CREDITS:
Styling: Women’s History Museum
Hair: Sonny Molina
Make-up: Nat Carlson
Casting: Women’s History Museum
Show Design: Women’s History Museum
Photography: Ben Taylor
Music: Amber Bradford
Sound: Peter Fonda
Lighting: Wildblur - Kai Sunderman, Aran Atsuo
Video Montage: Aidan Barringer
Screenprinting: Noel Freibert
Runway Production: Hillary Lui - Preacher House
PR: Lindsey Okubo - Seraph One
Special thanks to: Jeffrey Campbell Shoes