Live music and deconstructed knitwear at Proenza Schouler

Kicking off a New York Fashion Week that will feature live runway shows but still has some top designers sitting it out due to the ongoing pandemic, Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez offered their guests live string music, to a composition by the Queens-based musician Eartheater, as they displayed exaggerated forms often focused on the waist, with voluminous garments coming together at the center to wrap or hug the body.

The theme, the designers said, was experimentation and play — more important than ever, they said, as people navigate a pandemic that has changed the way everyone lives.

“Entering a new moment in time, thoroughly transformed,” they wrote in their production notes. “The question of what we are all stepping into — what it will look like, and what qualities will define it… How do we find beauty in the chaos?”

As violinists played, the runway show, staged at the Brant Foundation, an art study center in Manhattan’s East Village, began with sculpted knitwear and combined bold colors — yellow, purple, bright red — with black and white ensembles. Typical of the designers’ work was a theme of deconstructed garments. “Construction is eliminated, letting the yarn itself do all the shaping,” the designers explained.