When rising art star David Sherry was asked about the existence of a downtown New York art scene, he said Benjamin Cho was the guy who made it all happen. When Cho is told this after his show, he merely shrugs it all off. Such is the unassuming nature of this designer who wears his iconoclasm lightly.

Whether he nurtured the scene or not, Cho is an artist in his own right. He remains a staunchly maverick designer, and is perhaps the only one of his American contemporaries who could reasonably be compared to Martin Margiela. The art world cognoscenti (and Mary Kate Olsen) packed in to see his S/S collection, which saw Cho push the arts and craft element inherent in previous seasons to the hilt. Models came out adorned in hardware or in the case of one dress, an entire embroidered phoenix that was a feat of technical accomplishment. Backstage Cho said, “I wanted to explore lots of things. I did everything by hand. Next season I want to do something very different so I wanted to get it all out of my system.”
Like many of the season’s collections he explored ideas of transparency in a different way, finding the sensuality underneath. Asked where his clothes walk the line between art and fashion, Cho remains pragmatic as ever – “I see it as design. They go hand and hand with each other.”