Manhattan made: in Oscar de la Renta's studio

How design duo Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia bring contemporary panache to the enduring poetry of Oscar de la Renta

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Throughout the year Manhattan is home to 200 species of wild bird. The list of the city’s changing avian population includes large peregrine falcons, several warblers and the diminutive indigo bunting, sought out by birders for its shocking blue plumage. Every year, more than five types of owls wait out winter in Central Park. This past January, a fantastical bird-like creature stalked the Beaux-Arts hallways and grand staircases of the New York Public Library: for the finale of Oscar de la Renta’s Fall/Winter 2020 New York Fashion Week show, model Bella Hadid donned a fuchsia feathered cape, worn hood-up. It was a cinematic moment that, set against one of the city’s best-known landmarks, encapsulated the brand’s Manhattan lineage—when Oscar de la Renta out tted much of the city’s high society—and the contemporary work of its custodians, designers Laura Kim and Fernando Garcia.

Hadid’s plumed cape was designed and finished within walking distance, at Oscar de la Renta’s Midtown ateliers. Our visit to the brand’s nerve center comes several months before the first cases of coronavirus are announced in New York. Here, on the building’s 25th floor, the team is busy perfecting designs on workbenches, dress dummies and clothing rails. This is where Kim and Garcia dreamed up this spring’s Oscar de la Renta gowns—in blush-pink silks, nude lace and raffia—and the new bridal collection, drawing inspiration from recent travels and the brand’s homegrown success. “I would still consider it an American brand,” says Garcia. “We try to make it look as global as possible, because we travel so much and it’s impossible for us to not re ect that, but it’s known for American style.”

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