Working in cramped studios, poised over cutting tables on the Lower East Side, unveiling collections in sprawling Chinatown lofts, Mr. Campbell and his design-world peers are striving, sometimes nakedly, to position themselves as fashion’s next new thing. Standard bearers of gender fluidity, they conceive their work as a vibrant and often risqué corrective to the flatness pervading New York runways of late. They aspire to inclusivity, parading their work on models of mixed race, size, gender and age, competing to position themselves as successors to pioneering gender-fluid labels, including Telfar, Hood by Air, Luar and Gypsy Sport, that have made inroads into the mainstream. “The designers at those houses are now kings of fashion, but once they were just kids on the Bowery,” Mr. Campbell said, referring to, among others, Rio Uribe of Gypsy Sport and Shayne Oliver of Hood by Air. “They proved that this is actually a market and not just this kind of editorial niche.

Source: New York Times February 13, 2019 09:56 UTC