Grounded in a palette of black and white with a few garments rendered in mustard yellow, L.A’s Skingraft staged it’s first full-blown New York Fashion Week runway show at Chelsea Piers. The collection offered an expansive variety of leather leggings, trousers, tank tops, dresses and shorts, silk trousers, skirts and hoodies. There were also lots of layered tunics and protective-armor-like dresses.
One of the most remarkable parts of the collection was a series of black-and-white skeleton prints that appeared on leggings, dresses and jackets, reminiscent of the early days of Alexander McQueen.
The strong collection Jonny Cota and company sent down the runway was worthy of the brand’s New York Fashion Week debut. Cota’s sources of inspiration for this show were Shamanism and Santeria, a form of witchcraft in Mexican culture, but instead of focusing on the macabre, he looked to life as his creative stimuli. Elements of blood — wet and dry — were present in prints and colors throughout the collection in leathers, mesh jersey, and sheer silk nylon. The symbolic beauty Skingraft shed on the runway was a breath of fresh air.
