On the Runway, the Artists Are Present

Mike Eckhaus, center right, and Zoe Latta, center left, of the fashion label Eckhaus Latta.CreditDanny Ghitis for The New York Times

Over Labor Day weekend, a steady stream of hopefuls arrived at Eckhaus Latta’s basement studio in Chinatown for the chance to take an audition strut down a makeshift runway.

New York Fashion Week was days away, and Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta, the designers of Eckhaus Latta, and their casting director, Rachel Chandler, were surveying the talent (male, female and nonconforming) hoping to appear in their fashion show on Sept. 10.

Eckhaus Latta is an anomaly among the trendy sportswear labels that otherwise populate New York Fashion Week. Mr. Eckhaus and Ms. Latta, both 28, founded it in 2011, straight out of the Rhode Island School of Design, where neither had studied fashion (he, sculpture; she, textiles). And it maintains an air of art school (there is much talk of various “creative practices” and their “process-oriented” praxis).

Their designs have been exhibited at the hipper museums of the coasts — at MoMA PS1, in New York, and the Hammer Museum, in Los Angeles — and their shows often have the flavor of an old-school “happening.” (Their last show was held at PS1, at 9:30 p.m., on a weekday night mid-fashion week, in a snowstorm. Hundreds turned up anyway.)

Their runways, accordingly, are not the usual parade of indistinguishable fashion models. They draw a much wider array, more varied in height, weight, age, gender and race, than many fashion shows. Those who know will spot familiar faces. Didn’t I see you at the last Gavin Brown opening?

“It has always been a mixture of friends, people in our community, our vicinity,” Mr. Eckhaus said. “And industry models as well. Sometimes friends become models. And the models become friends.”

In recent seasons, they have included, inexhaustively: the musician Dev Hynes; the artist and D.J. Juliana Huxtable; the poet Grace Dunham, sister of Lena; the artist and fashion designer Susan Cianciolo; the gallery owner Bridget Donahue.

“It’s certainly not based on my looks or my figure,” Ms. Donahue, a friend of the designers who runs a namesake gallery on the Bowery, said with wry self-deprecation. “It’s more about that social connective tissue.”

Looks from Eckhaus Latta, on a mix of untraditional models. From left, spring 2016, Bridget Donahue; spring 2016, Dev Hynes; fall 2015, Hari Nef. CreditRegis Colin Berthelier/NOWFASHION; Valerio Mezzanotti

For her, the experience wasn’t particularly nerve-racking, as she knew many of the other models-to-be. And having no aspirations to model herself, she said, “your vanity melts away.” So, invited to participate, she did.

“I pretty much do anything an artist asks me to do,” she said. “I did at one point think, what are other people thinking — ‘Who is this?’”

Eckhaus Latta may not be minting divas, but some of its early avatars have gone on to bigger careers. The personality-driven approach to casting, with a mix of professional and nonprofessional models, is becoming more widely adopted, including by brands much larger than Eckhaus Latta.

While Mr. Eckhaus and Ms. Latta did not invent the practice, they were pulling in friends and nonprofessionals, and mixing men and women on the runway, long before European luxury brands like Gucci and Balenciaga found it prudent or provocative to do so.

In fact, one Eckhaus Latta acolyte, Hari Nef — the transgender model and actress who began as the label’s casting director, segued into being its model and is now an actress — has become a favorite of Gucci. “Now she’s too big for us,” Ms. Latta said. (She clarified that she was kidding.)

For this season’s show, to be held at Seward Park on the Lower East Side, Mr. Eckhaus and Ms. Latta said some friends would be back, but so would some professional models, and some newbies sourced via an open call on Instagram. Ms. Chandler, a co-founder of the new casting and management agency Midland, had been brought on to assist. “Everyone wants this now,” Ms. Chandler said.

“I can’t imagine doing a show that’s just not-models, and I can’t imagine doing a show that’s just models,” Ms. Latta said.

So far that day, the casting had turned up three muscular brothers (tall, taller and tallest) and a Japanese-Dutch puppeteer who arrived with her puppet.

“I don’t know why we didn’t have the puppet walk,” Ms. Latta said.