When Christopher John Rogers made its debut on the New York Fashion Week schedule in 2018, its namesake designer and his team were fresh out of college. They were in their early ’20s, navigating the brand’s quickly ascendant profile, working other jobs to support the dream. The following year, the brand won the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund; the one after that, the CFDA Emerging Designer of the Year Award; the one after that, plus a spot in the LVMH Prize finals.
Five years later, on Thursday night, Christopher John Rogers returned to the calendar, its first time showing on the official lineup since fall 2020. (After two years off the runway, the brand staged two shows during resort, one in 2022 and another in 2023.) A lot has happened since: There were the credits on celebrities and First Ladies, the collaborations with brands ranging from Target to J.Crew, and the necessary pivots to survive in an industry that’s constantly ebbing and flowing. The designer’s grown up—and so has his brand.
“Last year was a season of going inside of ourselves, taking a beat to reassess what was important to us and where we wanted to go,” Rogers said backstage. “Showing during February felt like the right move for the past year and a half. I’ve had an itch, I guess, to present a body of work at the same time as my peers and say something about the zeitgeist.”
Collection 015 is titled ‘Exhale’—something natural yet necessary, especially in a moment where it feels like we’re always holding our breath. To Rogers, that meant “letting go of the need to perform, letting go of a pressure to be a thing for someone,” he said, “thinking about yourself and what makes you happy and what’s going to make you feel fulfilled. [It’s] a selfish exercise in some way, maybe—which isn’t terribly bad.”
It’s not just that there’s a confidence to the clothes. You can see how the brand earned said confidence through the assortment itself. There are traces from silhouettes’ past, like how the volume of a skirt on a red ankle-length dress is reminiscent of those beloved strawberry shapes that put the brand on the map. Or how the ruffled tiers bring to mind that debut New York Fashion Week collection—now, they’re streamlined and a touch more adult. There was also a greater emphasis on tailoring, something that has become a core part of the label, but was explored more deeply than ever before on Feb. 6.
As a brand, Christopher John Rogers is practically synonymous with color, and this season, even that feels more mature. By Rogers’s own admission, the palette is “richer, deeper, more nuanced.”
“We have lots of different greens this season, which is a favorite for me,” he said. “We have everything from fluorescent slime green to a really beautiful, intense caper and a color we’re calling rosemary.” (The names the brand assigns each color are one of the most delightful things to discover about any given collection. Rogers would love to do a book of his colors one day—Rizzoli, call him.)
In addition to offering a wide array of separates, Collection 015 also incorporates more adjustable elements, like buttons or ties, that allow the wearer to personalize the garment to their body.
“This collection,” the designer said, “is a testament to being increasingly intentional about the work we’re doing and what we’re saying.” He wants to convey a message of “autonomy, freedom, liberty—those are being attacked, and it’s important for us to, as scary as it is, show up as ourselves as much as we can, consistently.”
