Andrea Lieberman has always been a designer who’s more interested in clothes than fashion. Rather than reinvent the wheel each season, her A.L.C. collections reflect what “feels right” in any given moment: a wider sleeve, a slightly longer collar, a narrower silhouette, or a lush color combination. As we near the end of lockdown, Lieberman focused on minor tweaks that made quite polished pieces feel as comfortable as sweats (though you happily won’t find sweatpants here).
There were jewel-toned ribbed-knit sets, styled together or broken apart with other separates, and the coats were almost un-tailored to feel more like blankets. Trousers had a new, relaxed sensibility thanks to hip-slung waistbands and pooling flares, a pivot from years of cropped, ultra-high army pants. The tight jeans of seasons past were replaced by an easy straight-leg style too. For those of us craving “going out” clothes, the soft jersey dresses and velvet cutout gowns might ease the transition fr
He’s too discreet to toot his own horn, but Martin Grant has lived the expat designer’s dream in Paris for nearly 30 years. That wasn’t even the beginning: Having started his first business back home in Melbourne at 16 years old and made the pages of Australian
Vogue at 18, he turned up in the City of Light a decade later with a degree in sculpture, zero connections, and proceeded to get straight to work. The turning point came in the mid-’90s, when Naomi Campbell did a turn in a show at the designer’s tiny Rue des Rosiers boutique. It’s the stuff of fashion lore; one doesn’t hear such stories much anymore.
Valentin Yudashkin launched his fashion label in the Soviet Union. Though materials were far less abundant than they are in present-day Russia, Yudashkin made an international name for himself with his limited resources, even catching the eye of the late Pierre Cardin. The practice of thinking beyond what’s on hand was one of themes of Yudashkin’s new fall collection, which focused on space travel, Cardin himself, and the narrative of a young woman factory worker who studies at night to become a fashion designer.
As usual, Yudashkin focused on silhouettes and technique. His supersharp blazers and double-breasted jackets were no fuss and impeccably cut. Regarding these masculine touches, he said he was thinking of his young protagonist reworking pieces from her father’s wardrobe. One cool example was a retooled white shirt that appeared to be worn in reverse with an exaggerated collar. Cardin and his space-age ’60s sensibility were the inspirations behind the collection’s t
How we’ll dress to “reemerge” has inspired a great debate among designers, retailers, and fashion obsessives. One faction predicts a return to sexy, decorative, audacious clothes, the kind that demand an audience; the other maintains that we’ll never give up the comfort and security of our year-long loungewear binge. Both extremes are just that: extreme. Intuitive, rational designers like Natalie Ratabesi understand it will likely be a mix: Some days, she just wants to slip into a beaded gown and five-inch heels again, and others she’s content in her new uniform of blazers and vintage Champion sweats. Her fall 2021 collection for TRÉ reflected both impulses, with plunging cutout bodysuits at one end and snuggly sherpa hoodies on the other.
Tracy Reese has packed and shipped every Hope for Flowers order that’s gone out in lockdown. After running a global brand for 20 years, start-up life has certainly been an adjustment, but it’s proved invigorating. “I’m having fun again,” she said from her hometown of Detroit. Later this year, Reese will open an H.Q. in the city’s arts district, where she plans to hire and train women of color in the community. The ultimate goal is to shift most of her production from overseas to Detroit and create employment opportunities for women whose skills in sewing, embroidery, and textiles haven’t been utilized in Motor City.