(10/2017) The concept of fashion has taken colorful approaches this fall season. New meanings to color have quickly translated into the nature of design at the start of New York Fashion Week’s Fall/Winter 2017. Gold evening gowns, a fashion to TOME’s Fall/Winter 2017 Collection, and the bubblegum pink pantsuit and jacket from Phillip Lim, are images of the bold moves made with color this season. The most blatant of these statements is the "power red" look – a head to toe uniform in a shade Pantone Color Institute identifies as Grenadine Red. With heightened sensibility for color, the presentation of fashion has become a reason flamboyant designs are recontextualized from the practical styles quintessential for the season.

Naturally, as the season’s change, so does the idea of fashion. Most recently, runway collections have guided larger, and "more mainstream" fashion distributors towards the energetic, and sometimes outlandish, creations from the fashion shows. As we consider the color palate introduced during New York Fashion Week, the reasons for dramatic, and abstract runway looks begin justifiable.

We have graduated from the days when practicality was "in season." A time when my Calvin Klein quilted black leather ankle boots and sporty meets technical fabricated DKNY double insulated rain jacket were classic statements of the season designing for colder –weathered atmospheres, no longer seems relevant, even to the far removed suburbia luxury department stores. F

ar from the maximized fashion statements pushed for in the New York City scene, these pieces identified my uniform for fall. Times have drastically changed. Now, the world has expanded into moments where even the most minimal, and practical perspectives for designs have become maximalists. The same transition can be addressed in the reconsideration for color. Hues that have classically announced the fall season - apple red, gold and shades of the brown and green replicating the colors of leaves changing on the trees have become merely a reference to an old fashion way of considering fall. Fundamental, nonetheless, as the colors in our world change, so does our perspective on fashion.

According to the Patone Color Institute, an authority and resource for color news, trends, insight on product design: the standard color hues of fall are Tawny Port, Butterum, Neutral Gray and Navy Peony. In the wake of New York Fashion Week Fall/Winter 2017, a new palette of energetic colors has silenced these warm, vintage hues. Grenadine Red Tawny Autumn Maple, Pale pink Ballet Slipper, Golden Lime and Marina blue are the new and improved color story.

A curiosity for why lime green, periwinkle blue, and pale pink now represent the colors of the fall lends a greater opportunity to explore the unconventional approach to fashion taking the industry by storm. Acknowledging the abstraction of color correlates to the heed for experimental designs in a community of fashion once focused on functionalism, communicated in both color and design. For just like the expression of color, jackets and boots are tangible ways to express fall fashion. As the colors for fall have changed, so has the perspective on classic fashion found new meaning.

Jackets

Coats, and jackets are an important statement to the New York fashion scene. When it comes to style on the streets, these are article of clothing is the first sight of fashion. Light weight styles have popularized as pieces that translate from outdoor statements, to indoor outfits, Pilot bomber jackets, cropped suit jackets and double breasted blazers by Zimmerman are popular fashions that comfortably interchanged from outdoor to indoor activity, accommodating to the New Yorker lifestyle as they run around the city.

Outerwear garments styled with waist ties at Marissa Webb, and trench coats of plasticity – particularly applauded in Raf Simmon’s first public Collection for Calvin Klein Fall/Winter 2017 where statements that carried into the fashion week season. A shopping companion to the classic fall boot, jackets are a true accessory of fashion. It’s current function and creativity of design has placed new value on the meaning of this item of fashion for fall. That is, the power of a naturally designated outerwear item of design has profited for it’s statement. It’s power found in the ability to surpass from outerwear to ready-to-wear.

Boots

Footwear is a peculiar fashion for New York. In a city accustomed to traveling by foot around and about and on the subway, rationalizing the investment for high priced fashion-forward footwear is a reasonable question in mind. As a pair of Stuart Weitzman tug at your heart, the necessity for functionalism is consuming, That being said, fashion forward shoe styles were not a strong focus at the New York Fall 2017 Fashion Week Scene. In the defense for functional fashion, this is a win. Although brands such as Coach and Alexander Wang excited the scene with footwear in New York, most of the footwear fashion herald from Europe, where sparkly boots showed at Isabelle Marant and romantic velvet styles at Erdem.

Cowboy boots reinstated at Louis Vuitton as Balenciaga’s Demna Gvasalia showed aggressive presentations of color with his stretch jersey thigh high boot. Although quieter colors of crPme and black, Nina Ricci supported the trend in similar style with a fiber and soft leather created slimming knee length boot. Arguably the loudest boot trend of the season is the slouchy boot , Yves St Laurent carried the trend into fall by almost every look represented in the brand’s Fall/Winter 2017 runway show. Ever since, fashion followers have been obsessed. As the European, high fashion luxury marked leads the conversation about fashion footwear a sense of practicality has been lost in translation. This season, the practicality of a fall boot has been reinvented to identify as a piece of art, coveted and admired. Its purpose has trailed far from its original sense of functionalism.

In the same way colors dictate the experience of the fall season, boots and jackets are further manifestations that embrace this time of the year. The passions of red, comforts of maples and navys complement the function of ankle leather boots and trench coats climate of the season. Just as there is a fresh start to anticipating a the season, so to is there an excitement for novel exploration of color and clothing definitive to this season.

As the weather change spurs a desire for new clothes, the fashion industry has elevated that enthusiasm into reinstating new colors, and meanings to key fashion for fall. As a result, boots and jackets have become true accessories, far from the practical sensibility of its original design. In the fall season the relationship between color and design are one in the same: as color exaggerates, so will the invention of clothing.