In March 2020, Christopher John Rogers, as they say, had a moment.
Known for his riotous colors and throwaway ballroom silhouettes, the then 26-year-old graduate of the Savannah College of Art and Design had just won the Vogue/CFDA Fashion Fund award for young designers and was widely hailed as the future of New York Fashion Week. Then the pandemic came and everything came to a standstill, including the stores whose orders were supporting emerging brands. Mr. Rogers was forced to pause and regroup.
Then, in September 2021, fashion screamed “the shows must go on!” begging for something different, he released collections digitally on his own schedule, named by number rather than by season. Not that it seemed to hurt his business: Vice President Kamala Harris wore a Rogers dress and jacket to be sworn in; the Met put a giant Rogers ball gown at the center of its September exhibit, “In America: A Lexicon of Fashion”; and two months later, he won the CFDA Women’s Clothing Designer of the Year award.
This year, in February, Meghan Markle wore an asymmetrical Rogers dress to the NAACP awards, and in May, Sarah Jessica Parker wore a custom-designed Rogers dress to the Met Gala. It looked like he had left the runway.
But then, on Tuesday night, two years after his last live show, in a cavernous warehouse in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, he returned. Collection 10 was a statement, in more ways than one.
“I wanted to say that everything can exist together,” said Mr. Rogers backstage. “That everything makes sense if you want. I’m so tired of the idea of this against this.”
Given the tense of time, it was not a throwaway rule. “I like the idea of multiplicity,” he added.
Before an audience speckled with guests in the bright plumage of previous Rogers collections and jammed with his colleagues, including designers Prabal Gurung, Batsheva Hay, Jonathan Cohen, Fernando Garcia of Oscar de la Renta and Mike Eckhaus of Eckhaus Latta, come to cheer him on (and perhaps paid for the idea that fashion isn’t a support industry), he revealed just that.
From the purple overcoat that opened the show, a nod to Ms. Harris’s inaugural issue now rendered oversized, tied tight at the waist with the shoulders sloping off the body as if from slopes, every color of the rainbow was present: a kaleidoscope in blue, fuchsia, sunset yellow and chartreuse.
So did his signature couture shapes—tight corsets atop lavish skirts—cut with a dash of sportswear and a dash of humor and mixed with big, blowy suits in streetwear-meets-C-Suite proportions. An amethyst taffeta tunic was topped by an aquamarine band on the chest and was slit by wetsuit zippers. A ribbed sapphire knit was left backless, the sides tied together by a salmon bow at the back and left like a train.
While some of the corsets and ruffles and pleats of skirts were over the top and awkward, too many ideas at once fought for expression (he pushes himself out of his comfort zone and it doesn’t always work), Mr. Rogers’s prints normally labeled “collision” was a lesson in unexpected harmony. See the black and white geometric trench coat over a pop art striped cardigan over slouchy floral pants, for example, or a jeweled lollipop striped halter top and watercolor splash skirt.
Old rules would have dictated that they couldn’t go together. Fah with old rules. They looked like a party of the most fun and elegant kind.
And they made a point that stuck even after the applause and air kisses, as a visibly emotional Mr. Rogers wiped away the tears. After all, it wasn’t just about the clothes.