by MIKE CHAIKEN
CTFashionMag.com
Hartford fashion designer Zoe Ilana Grinfeld is a step ahead in the design game.
Still in her teens, her collection shown at Hartford Fashion Week in Hartford, Conn. on Oct. 15 clearly represented an artistic voice. Every piece that walked out on the runway at Union Station clearly was imagined by the same mind and crafted by the same hand.
For many designers, finding your voice, your style, could take decades. Grinfeld is still waiting to reach her life’s third decade, let alone her career’s.
The collection shown in Hartford was great fun. It was familiar but unique. I could see a little bit of the 1980s in the silhouettes and the designer’s trademark patchwork look in the collection. But there was a touch of the 1990s (inject a little plaid into anything and it immediately invokes a little grunge). There also was something contemporary about it because of the way she distilled these different influences.
It was a cool collection. And it was a young collection. (An older woman may get away with wearing Grinfeld’s pieces if they were judicious in their selection.) It was also a collection that paid homage to the many different shapes of women.
Grinfeld, who did win “Project Runway Threads,” showed she is a designer that Connecticut should be proud to call its own.
PHOTOS by MIKE CHAIKEN
