At its core, SS21 is a celebration of the beauty of fabric. Created under the uncertain conditions of a global pandemic, the collection aims to share a tangible sense of comfort with our customers. We’ve considered the role these garments will play in a drastically different world than the one that we began 2020 in. SS21 is comfortably luxurious: hand feel and textile performance are front and center, while subtle marks of craftsmanship are to be found throughout the collection.

The move to bring a portion of our production to India was, quite frankly, an unexpected decision that we had not planned for. Through our friendship with another designer, we began to delve into the rich history of the country’s textile development and were floored by centuries-old techniques that are kept alive from generation to generation through careful preservation of craft. Textiles with incredible character are still being loomed and dyed by hand in India to this day, and we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of what the country has to offer. While our place of manufacture may be expanding, our commitment towards pursuing excellence remains narrowly focused. In India, we’ve found a deep and proud history of textile production that we are excited to introduce to you. There are fabrics that we’ve developed for this line that quite literally could not be made anywhere else in the world, and they’re paired with construction standards to match them.

Prints are sparse in SS21; we instead opted for texture to play a central role in the collection. The idea of texture as pattern can be seen in the gestural work of Abstract Expressionist painters like Franz Kline and Robert Motherwell, but our inspiration for the season came primarily through a Korean minimalist art movement called “Dansaekwha” which began in the mid-1970’s. Loosely translated as “monochrome painting,” works from this era feature canvases where paint is applied and then manipulated, pushed, dragged, removed or layered upon. Objects are dragged through thick coats in random or precise movements to create works that are impactful from afar but beautifully complex up close. In our collection, the tactile hand of a tonal floral jacquard is juxtaposed with the soft drape of a Cotton/Linen/Tencel blend. The sheen of a densely woven cotton twill plays alongside the matte, textured finish of a hand-loomed crosshatch pattern. And the heavy, durable weight of a herringbone twill is contrasted with the breezy lightness of a printed cotton. For the prints present, we chose bold pops of color to allow them to stand out from their tonal counterparts.

We hope this collection sheds light on the importance of global collaboration and the beauty of our interconnected world. Our lookbook releases shortly, followed by the first delivery of SS21 in late February.