Fashion Week’s Former Boy Wonder Grows Up Into a 3-D Pioneer

NEW YORK — When Zac Posen was the “boy wonder” of New York Fashion Week more than a decade ago, he staged lavish runway shows with friends like Claire Danes, Sean “Diddy” Combs and Bette Midler on the front row. But now, in the age of Instagram, the 38-year-old designer has gone a different route.

“My philosophy has been to do something very special and to actually give the public the same viewpoint that a fashion insider would have,” Posen says during an interview in his upper East Side studio.

To showcase his spring 2020 collection, Posen enlisted noted photographer Steven Sebring to create a 3-D look book of the styles using 360 interactive image technology. Expressive model Winnie Harlow swirls around to demonstrate how each gown moves and every look has a QR code, so a customer can scan the style she is interested in and download the video onto her phone.

“Today, when everybody lives through imagery and video and social media, why not perfect that image point that you’re going through? Clothing isn’t in reality always in a kind of runway walk, ” Posen explains.

“And it was really fun working with the technology this season. It’s incredible. I’ve been wanting to work with Steven Sebring for many years. I’ve known him forever. He first took a photo of a gown of mine on Patti Smith years and years ago. That’s how I first met Patti.

“The collection we were playing with is soft structure, with forms that really needed to be photographed in 3-D and that’s what he’s been building. His technology really scans movement and you get really get emotion in it and I thought Winnie Harlow was the perfect model for that. I had an inkling that she could move really well. I had never worked with her before and she was spectacular.”

Among the looks that photograph particularly well in the 3-D format is a billowing pastel gown made of miles of tulle. Posen was inspired to create the gown after working on costumes for The New York City Ballet’s Fall Fashion Gala that will take place later this month.

“It started an exploration of tulle as I was building these pieces in my office, seeing different ways of sheering, of techniques of pleating, of creative movement,” he says. “It added a nice accent into the collection, like a cloud, especially when I knew we were shooting in 3-D. He actually captured it in something called 4-D, which pictures it in another dimensional tier and that just looked extraordinary.”

Posen also created a silver gown of metallic taffeta as a “real fashion piece” with a otherworldly shape and tremendous volume, calling it “a Mars landing in a gown.”

The designer has long been known for creating structured pieces with intricate sculpting and draping, but for spring, he added casual looks made from soft fabrics, including denim pencil skirts, jeweled tops and navy pantsuits with handkerchief hems.

“You have to see it on to see how the form holds into it,” he says about the less structured pieces. “That’s the trick with soft clothing. Sometimes the soft pieces have as much work into to them as the structured.”

With four collections a season — in addition to his Zac Posen collection, he creates a lower-priced Zac Zac Posen line and also designs collections for Brooks Brothers and recently agreed to design a bridal line called Zac Posen for White One — Posen just believes it makes more sense to find other ways than the traditional runway show to showcase his designs.

“I love a runway show, don’t get me wrong, but (not doing one) gives us the ability to open our market about two to two and half weeks early and so our orders are in, our fabrics are ordered and we can get on to the next one. It keeps it more efficient,” says Posen, whose designer collection is available in Houston at Elizabeth Anthony.

“When we do do shows, I’ll do them outside of New York and will do them only for charity. It makes it more special, especially with the crazy fashion week schedule. I’d rather focus human resources, human energy and finances towards creating something that has actually lasting power beyond 15 minutes.

“I always want to make sure that the clothing is still center stage. That’s essential because at the end of the day that is what we’re doing. We’re making women feel and look great and enjoy fashion.”

For more on Zac Posen’s collection, play the video: