LIBERTINE AW15’16 READY-TO-WEAR NEW YORK FASHION WEEK

Johnson Hartig may be one of fashion’s more compelling magpies. Surrealism, rave, punk, street—he embraces it all with a gleeful exuberance and folds reworked vintage pieces in with the new. Fall found that Libertine spirit out in full force; it was a welcome, maximalist jolt in the midst of this week’s staid offerings.

Women’s silhouettes skewed squarely toward the ’60s (fur-trimmed sack coats and minidresses galore), while the men’s offering embraced more streetwear and sport-inspired shapes (hoodies, bombers, and sweatpants). They all came decked out with decades’ worth of pop talismans: a Warhol soup can, Duchamp’s urinal, the Misfits’ iconic skull, doves by Braque, Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer’s Bumble. Even a little cherry-colored telephone from Hartig’s childhood home made an appearance. The designer whipped them into patches that adorned…nearly every piece, really. The remainder was encrusted with crystal designs; a standout coat came embellished with volcanoes spitting bits of lava. Somehow it made only weird and perfect sense that Jean Cocteau’s verses should end up glittering and splashed across a powder blue coat. The fabrications on the whole were a great coup, like the Surrealist multihued patchwork mink cape. And by the time Hartig’s models danced, selfied, and skanked their way down the catwalk at show’s end (looking, heaven forfend, actually happy), the contact high was hard to resist.