Installation Three of NYFW 2025 Serial: SUSTY IS A MUSTY by Amy Mazius

“How do we make latex more chill, more accessible, opulent?” Cole Durkee, designer and founder of Destroyer of Worlds is here to transform what casual looks and feels like for the new world order. The future is now, it’s a little fucked up, and it’s definitely wearing latex, layered with basketball shorts and hand-dyed, upcycled fur. Designing is both a fantasy and a necessity for Durkee, finding harmony somewhere between soft sculpture and hardcore.

If the world is ending, Durkee reminds us we’ll need big, fabulous coats to make the fall softer. And what will be left? “Fame permeates time. It dictates our history in a lot of ways. The victor gets to tell history,” says Durkee. His concept of Famous Forever encapsulates this feeling, the historians are the figures we’ve enshrined in tabloids, history books, or the group chat. Characters bridging fame and infamy ushered this idea in perfectly at Durkee’s presentation, taking shape as a late night show for the likes of post-apocalyptic Dennis Rodman, Marilyn Monroe, and other culture-defining characters.

It makes sense that Durkee’s pieces begin at the end of another garment’s end of life. “Dystopian futures are pretty drab, they don’t always look fun or sexy. But then there is The Fifth Element and Blade Runner– it’s still a dystopia, but with a sheen of glossy plastic.” This slick candy-coated future works well within the language Durkee presents, sanding the edges to reveal some of the grit beneath. The showstopping chunky sneaker was a true standout. Durkee describes the detail in these otherworldly essentials, created in collaboration with @Great_Chairs, “Pictures of the collection were carved into this block of terra cotta, almost like hieroglyphs. Then remolded and recast in rubber and foam to become a shoe. The silver pair still retains some of the dust from the terra cotta, giving them a tarnish, like an artifact from the future delivered to the past.”

It’s these mesmerizing details that punctuate the collection and celebrate the group project element of Durkee’s design practice. The latex innovation this season featured a holographic latex, which Durkee foiled, and artisan dyed furs by Nathan Juergenson, who also did the wigs.

When Durkee first started working with latex, he was interning at Vex clothing in Chicago. Durkee says, “it was the only way I could learn about working with latex.” Understandably, latex isn’t always an obvious choice in art, design, or fashion school, with complicated principles that go beyond traditional sewing and construction. Durkee’s time at Vex introduced him to the world of latex, spanning far beyond the fabric itself. “The clientele was really fierce with bizarre requests that tickled me. I really liked how people come to you and tell you what they want. Latex is sexual but it’s also kind of silly, I kind of like the aspect that it’s funny – sex is funny – latex is sexy but it’s also an uncomfortable awkward material as well.” Over the years, Durkee has worked with latex to create works that are sleek and slimy, second skin, and this season showcased some new takes on the material, like the drawn ribbed tank and other “normal” pieces becoming abnormal in their texture and material, “or more bizarre in their cut… comfy cozy, but still wacky and wild,” describes Durkee.

It’s easy to get excited talking to Durkee, getting lost in the world of reworked materials, dyed, cut, woven, sculpted, and ultimately, piled on or stripped away. This is part of Durkee’s magic, “incorporating whatever I feel like rather than questioning if it’s fashion or a consumable product. I want what I create to be a creative, immersive space.” And it is – this is exactly the time we live in, inventing and hunting for thrifted treasures, collecting dream coats from generations before us, clipping charms to our belt loops and bags, blending old and new in a performance that is as unserious as it is dire. Durkee says, “as millennials, we've been so shamed for what we were given. We were taught to be nostalgic for everything that we had. That's kind of what this collection is about. We're all trapped in the world that we live in. But I love aspects of our horrible society because we live in it.”

Clutch your cabbage patch close, the end is near. But Durkee is optimistic, sort of. Durkee says, “We can go somewhere with our shit-show future.” I’ll go anywhere as long as I’m strapped safely into my Destroyer of World block sneakers.