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This is an edition of the newsletter Show Notes, in which Samuel Hine reports from the front row of the fashion world. Sign up here to get it free. A few hours before he was due to show up to the 2025 CFDA Awards, Mike Eckhaus realized the event was black tie. “I checked the email on my way home from the studio and was like, ‘Oh, okay!’” Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta, the founders of Eckhaus Latta, have never attended the glitzy awards show, which is often called the Oscars of American fashion. Then they snagged a nomination in the American Menswear Designer of the Year category, and on Monday night found themselves getting ready for the red carpet in a large suite at the Ritz Carlton just off Central Park. Latta wore a black slip dress with furry mules, while Eckhaus shimmied into a black nylon suit. An Eckhaus Latta employee snapped pics of the pair on a tiny digital camera. (They had initially planned on getting ready at Eckhaus’s apartment before their publicists at DLX intervened.) As the designers sipped champagne and grazed on charcuterie, they joked about their unlikely evening plans. “I was looking at the comments on Instagram when the CFDA posted the nomination, and everyone was saying ‘Go Mike,’ which I thought was really sweet,” Latta said. “And then I realized they were talking about Mike Amiri.” Their fellow nominees were much more comfortable with the pageantry of the CFDA: Amiri, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen of The Row, Thom Browne, and two-time winner Willy Chavarria. “Us getting dressed for this is a bit of drag,” Latta added. Eckhaus debated whether to wear a bow tie. “I’ve never seen you wear a bow tie!” Latta teased. Eckhaus and Latta, who founded the brand in 2011 after meeting as students at RISD, have always cocked an eyebrow at the mainstream fashion establishment. They once hired Heiji Shin to shoot actual couples having sex while tearing off each others’ Eckhaus Latta sweaters, and last September turned a New York Fashion Week dinner party into a guerilla runway show. The clothes have an artsy, democratic vibe; Eckhaus Latta’s signature knits, for example, are made with strange colors or off-kilter shapes or surprising fits (and often all three). American fashion is fundamentally about selling a dream of higher status and a more beautiful life, but Eckhaus Latta promises something different: clothes that will transform you into the coolest, freakiest version of yourself. Nobody was more surprised at the nomination than the designers themselves. “I mean, when we learned we were nominated, our first reaction was: They ran out people,” Eckhaus joked, as he changed out of a white T-shirt. “It’s not that we were ever against the CFDA,” Latta added, “but I don’t think we really played the game or kissed the ring. But it’s really nice to have this nomination and just feel seen by the larger establishment that we’ve been alongside but not really working with for a long time.” When I asked if they had prepared an acceptance speech, Eckhaus and Latta looked puzzled. “I didn’t realize there are speeches,” Latta said. “We’ll wing it if we have to, but I don’t anticipate us having to,” Eckhaus added. (Thom Browne ended up taking home the hardware.) Traditionally, best designer nominees bring a celebrity guest, and Eckhaus and Latta invited the actor Morgan Spector, who popped out of the suite’s bedroom wearing a three-button suit in a dark, wrinkly fabric. “You guys make such nice clothes,” declared Spector, who was meeting the designers for the first time but was already steeped in the Eckhaus Latta sensibility. “A year or two ago one of your shows popped up on my Instagram feed, and I was like, ‘Everyone I know and think is cool is at this show,’” Spector said. “And it seemed kind of punk to me. Not in an actual aesthetic way, but in a sort of, fuck you, we’re doing what we want kind of way. It felt a little transgressive.” Eckhaus Latta is often called a gender-neutral brand, which it’s not, but the designers embrace the fact that their customers shop on both sides of the aisle, with men often buying their womenswear, and visa-versa. “That was kind of the funniest part,” Latta said, of their nomination in the menswear category. “There's definitely a gray space that exists within what we do between mens- and womenswear," Eckhaus added. “With that said, we do really good menswear.” The funny thing is, if you’ve been paying attention in recent years, Eckhaus Latta’s current spotlight makes complete sense. Though small compared to the other nominees, Eckhaus Latta has consistently been one of the most original and engaging brands in New York. It’s just that in today’s fashion environment, where nothing feels quite interesting or exclusive enough to justify increasingly outrageous prices, Eckhaus Latta’s righteously un-algorithmic style sticks out. And the designers are rising to the occasion. Their September show revealed a more mature Eckhaus Latta, with elegant, Helmut Lang-ish forms that offered something precise and wearable without compromising on the brand’s signature sensuality. They’ve also started playing the game, recently landing a collaboration with Ecco and dressing the likes of Greta Lee. “I think there's a bit more of a focus in the work we’re making. When we started Eckhaus Latta, we were freaks and we thought about clothing as being freaky,” Eckhaus said. “But I think the important part is we’re still freaks,” Latta added. “We’re just refining the freak.” During the current luxury downturn, Eckhaus Latta is growing. In fact these days you can’t shake a stick below Delancey without hitting someone carrying one of the brand’s clever snap handbags. Commercial success is a new priority of their refined-freak era. “Before, that wasn’t the intention,” Latta said. “And now serving people and getting our clothes on more people, and people being comfortable and excited and expressing themselves through it, is way more exciting to us than, I don't know, a wild look in a show.” Just before heading to a waiting car downstairs, the designers stood with Spector in front of the mirror. “I just want to see how we look together,” Eckhaus said. “Ok, we look fab.” He decided against the bow tie.
