Kevan Hall’s Fall/Winter 2022 collection: Trading Post! envisions a burgeoning time when travelers would meet to exchange wares, folklore, and handcrafted textiles from Mali, to Morocco, to the legendary Tarshish. His use of regional fabrics, accented with blackened gold and copper metallics, reimagines a glorious era of seafaring trade and opulent beauty. The womenswear collection includes textured prints inspired by Northern Africa that are transformed into timeless signature pieces. By incorporating rich jacquards, matelassé, and brocades, Hall uses materials to take us on a journey through history. Trading Post! locates us at a new and unique intersection of time and place – one that is currently uniting us all from great distances.

Set among a warehouse of traditional and contemporary Moroccan and Middle Eastern furniture and antiques, the show started with elegant day dresses in abstract floral and animal prints, then led into more sharply tailored pieces in weighted materials such as brocade, and followed by Hall’s signature eveningwear ensembles. The latter materialized this season as gowns done in bold metallic florals with sensuous heavy drapery creating cascades of movement and fluidity. The final looks of the collection took on the feel of the Islamic Golden Age through the use of black and gold sequins on gowns and suiting, as well as an Arabesque inspired metallic matelassé used for the outerwear.

As his second collection back on the runway after a 20-year hiatus from showing, Hall brings us all his signature looks of elegance, modernity, and the much-needed return back to formality.

credit photographer Evan Hall

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