At Storm King, a runway show about detours became a lesson in flirting and instincts.
By Gutes Guterman
Photos by Karla Tomanelli
Published
About 15 minutes before the Collina Strada SS27 show began, a guy texted me, calling our—or, my perceived—flirtations a “burgeoning friendship.” Friendship? Friendship?!?! I thought we were going to suck face at the Metrograph bar tomorrow! I canceled another date for him! I was already working on the perfect outfit! What did he mean friendship? I handed my phone to everyone around me. Read it! Read it! I screenshotted it and sent it to my girls-only group chat. I recounted it to two men familiar with the matter, then a third, and, fine, maybe even a fourth. What do I do? I asked everyone, anyone, even though the only logical answer was Nothing.
We’re at Storm King Art Center, an outdoor museum where monumental sculptures are scattered across 500 acres of the Hudson Valley, near Beacon, New York. We are nowhere—I repeat, nowhere—near an outlet. This is important because after the show ends, I’m meant to interview Hillary Taymour, the founder and creative director of Collina Strada. This is also important because, in the flurry of being caught off guard, I’ve nearly drained my entire phone battery.
As the show began, we took our seats on long wooden benches, thoughtfully facing away from the sun. While everyone around me swatted away the maize calligraphers (commonly known as corn flies, a colloquialism not nearly as romantic), I sat there, ashamed of the thoughts I'd just had on the hour-long shuttle ride upstate. You’re not supposed to have those kinds of thoughts about a friend. I barely even knew this person, aside from many parties spent making eye contact across the room and, on the rare occasion, small talk. But I had a feeling, a sense of possibility that can only be attributed to feminine intuition, that someday, one day, this would end in a kiss.
The first look came out: a ruffled pink capelet, a feather fauxhawk, our first glance at the new Collina Strada x KEEN collaboration. Embellished underwear, pink and perfect against the lush green backdrop. Underwear. Underwear. I thought I'd end up in those. Somewhere on the Lower East Side, or maybe Bushwick.
The collection is called Detour, which is apt considering the place (expansive), the clothes (unrestrained), and my confidence (wavering). The Collina Strada universe—and by extension, Hillary—is rooted in joy and freedom. Look after look appeared across the plain in ruffles, corsets, feathers, and bloomers, as if a medieval court had finally been allowed to go out dancing unsupervised. If this collection is a detour from the paths we take, perhaps the entirety of Collina Strada is a detour from something bigger: norms, confinements, boring people. Look 19, a yellow chiffon set, oozed the kind of romance that I thought was reserved for Beauty and the Beast’s Belle. But here she was, fast and free. Hillary later told me she had been inspired by A Knight’s Tale.
“Chivalry is not dead,” Hillary said. That was reassuring information in light of tomorrow’s mission.
When I asked Hillary what she wanted people to feel after hauling us all the way to Storm King, the answer was simple: “Joy and inclusion.” And, she added, the opportunity to “fully get to touch grass.”
Mission accomplished: by the finale, models were running back across the lawn. Hillary told me that creating “moments of togetherness” is where each collection begins. Watching everyone frolic around in the grass, it was easy to believe her.
What Hillary didn’t know is that by graciously obliging me with a belated interview the following day, she had unknowingly signed up to be my oracle. After all, she seems comfortable not just with occupying, but seeking, alternative pastures. I came with questions and a fully charged phone. “How do you know when a detour is actually taking you somewhere better, versus when you’re just lost?” I asked her.
“I trust my gut, and I follow it every time. I think trusting your initial instincts and feelings is the most important thing you can do. You just have to trust your instincts that you are going the right way. Trusting yourself is so important!” she mused.
This was, of course, the exact opposite of what I had spent the last 24 hours doing. My first instinct was that we were flirting, that Metrograph was obviously a date spot. But then he used the word friendship, and I immediately decided that one word would override what I knew. Maybe trusting your instincts doesn’t mean knowing where something is going. Maybe it just means resisting the urge to force an answer before you get there. Would time tell?
Before I let my oracle go, I asked her one last thing: “What is more dangerous—wanting something too much or pretending you don’t want it at all?” At that moment, I was trying very hard to do the latter.
“Wanting something too much,” Hillary said. “I think you can start to lose the plot and obsess over something so much that your mind gets warped, limiting you from other amazing things happening.”
There it was. A third option. I had spent so much time turning that one word over in my head—friendship, friendship, friendship—that I almost missed all the possibilities happening in front of me. I didn’t have to choose between declaring my feelings and pretending I had none: I could put on the outfit, go to Metrograph, and let the thing become whatever it was going to become.
If you asked me now to picture a detour, I’d picture a girl in yellow chiffon running across a field at Storm King, fabric flying behind her, heading somewhere with intention, but without looking particularly concerned about the route. And by the way—it was, in fact, a date.
