‘Alice in Wonderland’ Comes to New York Fashion Week: Reviews of Cinq à Sept and KÛR Collection

On the roof of the Beekman Hotel in downtown Manhattan on Thursday afternoon, Alice in Wonderland was in full bloom. Or a playful New York Fashion Week variant of it.

Across three rooftop spaces, with One World Trade Center looming above, Cinq à Sept’s models lounged in wide pants and marabou feather stoles. Denim and Chantilly lace made for unlikely luxe bedfellows, alongside black tulle and military twill. The hair was Hair-era, big and tousled, and the feeling was very much a boho dressing-up box, with slouchy sweaters layered over flowing dresses: a rock chick’s Velvet Goldmine made a little bit more whimsical.

There was acrobatics, with a woman performing some nimble gymnastics on a ring. There were customized parasols. And there was food, fit for Alice too: teatime pastries and little lemon tarts and quiches, and refreshing raspberry-infused iced tea.

The only thing missing was the Mad Hatter.

Later, the designer Kasuni Rathnasuriya presented KÛR Collection’s quietly stunning Fashion Week show at the Maritime Hotel. No acrobats here, but instead beautiful meditations on form and patterning, with long, body-hugging dresses of lace, crisp white shirts with ruffles and insect and jasmine flower embroidery, dark pants with stripes, and tiered, ruffled skirts.

The lace dresses were handmade in Sri Lanka, where Rathnasuriya was born and raised. “We took the long, hard way to make something unique,” the designer told The Daily Beast. “Every Fashion Week is crazy,” she said, observing the models in KÛR Collection’s clothes. “What you don’t see is the hours of work behind the scenes.”