STFU, It's Heron Preston FW23
Despite being based in New York, Heron Preston's eponymous brand has never presented a runway show in NYC, until now. On February 11, it all came home when Preston debuted his co-ed Fall/Winter 2023 collection to a packed crowd.
The resulting designs felt very much like the sort of clothes that fashion-forward New Yorkers would design for their own wardrobes : puffer jackets for brick winter (note to suburban types: "brick" means "cold"), jokey graphic T-shirts that riff on gift shop merch sold in tourist hotspots like Canal Street, daily driver workwear, and see-through dresses for the hip, sexy parties attended by hip, sexy people.
There's stylistic crossover here, too, in so far as the clothing is essentially genderfluid — everyone knows that security jackets and sweatpants have no gender, but Preston also proposes fur boots for all.
An edginess runs throughout Preston's new designs, as is so often the case with his work.
Confrontational "S.T.F.U."-printed T-shirts, barbed wire-trimmed heels, and boro-stitched denim jeans (very much of the moment thanks to likes of PROLETA RE ART and Givenchy) reiterate the streetwise grit that's been a Heron Preston signature since the early days, giving the far-reaching design cues the feel of a wardrobe that's been curated by someone pairing vintage with fresh finds.
For instance, some of those fresh touches — like Preston's motocross inspiration and new school mule sandals — twist contemporary trends to .
Serial collaborator that he is, it's surprising that Preston didn't directly debut a new partnership on the runway, though we know how he feels about collabs these days.
Perhaps Preston wanted his homecoming to simply speak to his own strengths, which makes sense.
"It's more of an exercise of style, less fashion," Preston told Highsnobiety last year. "I always like to make that distinction, hence the recurring Russian logo Стиль, which translates to 'style.'"
Preston's Russian branding was underplayed for FW23 but he's clearly still putting the emphasis on personal style.
