The invitation to Tanner Richie and Fletcher Kasell’s show arrived in the form of a colonial-style dollhouse door painted robin’s egg blue with gold finishes. Like “Alice in Wonderland,” you immediately wanted to crawl through it, to fall down their rabbit hole of fashion fantasy.
Just don’t hit your head on the way down — ushers wearing branded hard hats and utility overalls seated guests at the Capitale on Bowery Tuesday, a prelude to Tanner Fletcher’s homeware capsule launching on Etsy.
“We’re very inspired by interiors, so this is a show we wanted to do since we started the brand,” said Kasell. “We’ve had this idea for years and years.”
The idea was more performance. When the lights went up, we landed in Fletcher and Kasell’s living room with chintz wallpaper and antique furniture (collecting is a passion for them). Putting runway decorum in reverse, they came out first to set up their narrative about in-laws coming to town and the place being in awful disarray.
So off they went to the Etsy van nearby, unloading models one-by-one. With odds-and-ends handy, like a porcelain vase or a metal magazine stand, they quite literally “redecorated” the space before exiting backstage.
Lacy negligees, cutesy needlepoint and pointelle sweaters and camp shirts, one with layers drawn back to resemble curtains, were a few casual items they wore for “heavy lifting,” styled just as Tanner Fletcher’s cohort of queer Brooklynites would with jorts or briefs and boots.
Evening was where they truly shined, especially the sartorial men’s suits in madras plaid or lavender sequin lace and cocktail shaker frocks with fanned-out bust lines.
More theatrical, a Dracula-looking figure holding a candelabra wore a ruffled pussy-bow blouse like the one Alan Cumming donned the night before at the Emmys, while a raven-haired debutante in a white cap-sleeve gown with rosettes was a dead ringer for Audrey Hepburn in “My Fair Lady.”
The whole thing ended with Romilly Newman in a massive ball dress made of reproduction 18th-century floral taffeta. Dragging the matching drapes behind her, she managed to hang them up just in time for the Tanner Fletcher family’s arrival.
It was a big project for a small brand, but they weren’t late for their important date.