“We’re trying to show people that we know how to make clothes,” said Lizzie Owens, Stella Ishii’s new designer at 6397 at a walkthrough of the label’s pre-fall lineup. Owens is a career designer who most recently served as Alexander Wang’s menswear director.
Ishii is something of an IYKYK character in New York’s fashion landscape. She was famously the first in the US to represent labels like Maison Margiela and Comme des Garçons at her showroom, The News, and through 6397 she has built a similar kind of presence in women’s ready-to-wear: It’s for those who get it.
Together, Ishii and Owens have set out not to transform 6397, but to augment it. “We’re trying to find the urban and mix it with the heritage, heirloom sensibility,” said Owens. The goal is to root the 6397 collection in the city-dweller practicality that makes a New Yorker’s uniform particular.
The unlock here comes from two sources. First, Owens is a skilled technical designer who knows how to make good clothes. This much is evidenced by the curved legs and hefty jersey of a pair of elevated sweatpants (they really do translate as nice wool trousers), a run of chic pull-on skirts cut in swishy ripstop, and the mesh vents hidden in a floral jacquard anorak.
The second thing: Because Ishii only shops and wears menswear, it’s the guiding principle behind 6397, and it’s also Owens’s specialty. The brand’s clothes answer the question most women ask when they try on a thrifted men’s blazer or a men’s button-down with comfortable but questionable proportions: What if menswear was actually made for me? Here, Ishii and her team have reimagined her husband’s everyday coat in an unfuzzy overcoat made out of a lightweight wool with a lived-in patina, cut boxy shirts in flattering proportions, and made “boy shorts” in a supple wool and cotton twill denim cut on the bias. There’s been a boom of “menswear-as-everyone-wear” this year, something 6397 has been doing since its inception. As usual, Ishii was ahead of the curve.
