AYAMA Skipped the Calendar and Threw a Car Wash Instead

Models in AYAMA Collection 003 washing vintage cars outside Time Again on Canal Street — AYAMA Collection 003, launched with a car wash outside Time Again in New York. Images courtesy of AYAMA and L.E.R. Public Relations. Photography: Charlie Rubin.

New York Fashion Week starts next week, which means every label in the city is currently competing for the same handful of eyeballs. AYAMA went the other way. On Wednesday night the block outside Time Again on Canal Street turned into a car wash, with models in the new collection soaping down vintage cars while guests and a few curious neighbors drank on the sidewalk.

The label is three collections and four drops in, and founder Maya Goldberg has already done the official route. She has shown on the CFDA calendar. Collection 003 skipped it. Coming from a designer with that credential, the choice reads less like a label that could not get a slot and more like one that decided the slot was beside the point.

Four looks from AYAMA Collection 003, including hibiscus prints, polka dots and striped shirting — Looks from Collection 003, which introduces swimwear and ready-to-wear to the AYAMA line. Images courtesy of AYAMA and L.E.R. Public Relations. Photography: Charlie Rubin.

Collection 003 also pushes AYAMA into swimwear and ready-to-wear for the first time. Hibiscus prints turn up in burnt orange and a washed indigo, on a cropped tank with matching shorts and again on a short flippy skirt. Polka dots run across a lace-trimmed camisole and a sheer dotted column dress. A striped shirt with long bell cuffs hangs open over olive leggings with paneled knees. The most structured piece in the lineup is a cream and black zip top, cut close and vaguely moto.

AYAMA describes the collection as a conversation between comfort and structure, spandex against leather, soft surfaces against slick ones. Press releases say that kind of thing all the time. Here it mostly holds up, because the tension is visible in the clothes: stretchy and easy, but cut with enough shape that nothing reads as loungewear.

An AYAMA Collection 003 look photographed at a Canal Street luncheonette counter — Shot on Canal Street rather than on a runway. Images courtesy of AYAMA and L.E.R. Public Relations. Photography: Charlie Rubin.

The setting did more work than a runway would have. Photographed by Charlie Rubin in a Canal Street luncheonette and out on the wet street, the clothes look like clothes, worn by people standing around on a warm night in September. A runway would have flattened that.

The FVM read: going off-calendar only works as a statement if you could have been on it. Goldberg can, and has. AYAMA calls itself seasonless, and a brand that means it has little reason to organize its year around somebody else’s two weeks.

Collection 003 goes online to shop or pre-order later this fall.

Images courtesy of AYAMA and L.E.R. Public Relations. Photography: Charlie Rubin.

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AYAMA Skipped the Calendar and Threw a Car Wash Instead

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