From the start, Daryl K’s big draw was a good-fitting pant—be that lowrider boot-cut jeans, baggy models, or signature second-skin leather leggings. Speaking with Vogue in 2012, Kerrigan joked that her label could be called “Pants-R-Us.” It was the desire to find the perfect pant and a great jacket” that spurred her into business in the first place,” she recalled recently. Going through her archives while prepping the exhibition has proven, she noted, the longevity, reach, and relevancy of her work.
Kerrigan was known for an edgy downtown cool—Sonic Youth’s Kim Gordon was an early fan—yet she asserts that what was once niche has since gone global. “This concept of downtown and cool, it reached everybody, I think. Along with iPhones [came] the commodification of cool. What’s interesting,” she continued, “is that everything that I created—not everything, but so many things—just became part of the vocabulary of fashion, [like] stretch leather leggings [which are] a ubiquitous style now.”
The exhibition organizes Kerrigan’s work into four themes: New York, Rebel, Woman, and I Am My Muse. The last is especially topical as it intersects with a larger discussion about the lack of visibility of female designers in an industry catering to women. Kerrigan, always her own fit model, believes that clothes have to move with and work for a woman. A successful garment, in her book, is one that’s made for life not just to look at. Below, Kerrigan talks about her exhibition and why the ’90s are so right for now.
Does being an independent designer mean something different today than when you started out?
I would say the basis is the same: You want to express your own ideas and not be influenced by anybody or judged by anybody; you can say what you want and say exactly what you feel. I think that is the essence of being an independent designer, independent in the way that you’re not being owned by anyone else’s ideas of what you should say.
It feels like the big brands are taking up more and more in space.
I look at my own collection, my exhibition here, and I look at what I have from then in terms of what I see that’s new, and it just made me consider that, yes, I feel like my spirit of yesterday still goes with what they are staying today; it hasn’t faded, it hasn’t diminished. That is one thing I know that I have. It felt good. I don’t know who the big brands really represent anymore, they’re just outfits that are not really sexy. I think I am representing what people—women—actually want to wear, regardless of their age. I mean, fashion has for so long just distanced itself from the actual woman. We know that so many people have an issue with that. Female designers are not in there designing for the females.
#Exhibition #Daryl #Kerrigan #Brings #Downtown #Cool #Upstate #York
