Michelle Obama Clothier Thakoon Reflects On The Fashion Week That Was

On Friday, February 20, the last day of Fashion Week, designer Thakoon Panichgul of the label Thakoon collapsed into an egg-shaped chair at Bergdorf Goodman's white-tableclothed seventh-floor restaurant for tea with the Daily Transom. The fashion industry cafeteria of sorts had been offering an elaborate afternoon tea service all week courtesy London's Berkeley Hotel (it was called it Pret-A-Portea, not to be confused with midtown sandwich chain Pret-a-Manger).

Fashion Week had been a long slog, said the designer. "I'm soooo tired. I can't catch up on sleep." He was wearing the same red plaid shirt he'd been wearing all week, he said, paired with a contrasting green plaid scarf. He was planning to meet with the buyers from Berdgorf later that day: "I can't generally say that everyone is having a hard time, but what I can say is I think everyone is cautious about what they're buying," he observed.

He'd been meeting with retailers all week since his Monday runway show, which had been attended by Ikram Goldman, Michelle Obama's Chicago-based boutique-owner stylist, and her Social Secretary Desiree Rogers, who was photographed sitting next to Anna Wintour in the front row. Mr. Panichgul owes his household-name status to Ms. Obama's appearance in a red dress of his design at the Democratic National Convention last summer. After the show, he had retired with a few friends and colleagues to the brand-new Cooper Square Hotel, where they had sat around a fireplace. "Your mind has been thinking for so long that it doesn't want to think anymore," he said, of his usual post-show feeling of "emptiness."

He was hopeful that the First Lady's embrace of fashion would help return a certain gravity to the industry. "For so long, there was a celebrity culture that kind of took... fashion into something that was light and frivolous," he said. "Now I hope that fashion will not be looked at in that way. Because I think it's such an important part of culture and living."

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