Visits: 25
Lauren Manoogian didn’t set out to be a fashion designer, she accidentally fell in love with textiles. “When I was a freshman in college I saw the textile wing of the school and there were people stirring dye pots and all these machines and I was like, ‘I want to be with those cool witches in there.’ ” It’s then that Manoogian learned to knit; she’s been exploring its magic ever since, driven by the idea that “there’s something really accessible about clothing,” and that garments “can impact peoples’ actual experience in their body and the way that they feel in the world.”
Spring is one of Manoogian’s most introspective collections as it records the physical and emotional effects of the grief she felt at the loss of her beloved grandfather. There’s a spectrum of feeling within mourning and this is reflected in the palette of white, ecrus, beiges, blushes, and, for the first time since 2015, black. In parallel with the self-reflectiveness of the lineup, the clothes moved back closer to the body, an exception being an oversized and intentionally holey grandpa-style sweater. Its woven counterpart was an open-weave wrap. “I feel like what’s cool about knitting is it can be really quick and gestural,” said Manoogian. She approaches wovens–of which there are many for spring—the same way. A light cotton dress featured knots and one style of sweater had a row of ties that could be fastened or hung like streamers. Knowing the backstory of the collection, it’s easy to see these as being symbolic of stages of grief, the awful pit in the stomach, the sense of things left hanging; but on the rack what you see is an interesting object. And to be clear, this was a gentle collection, not a depressive one at all; in fact there were polka-dots.
It wasn’t just the geta-like sandals that made this collection feel a bit Japanese; some of the cardigan shapes were kimono-like, and they embraced the body lightly. There were many keepers in this collection, though it was lower key than her exploration of volume for resort 2023. The designer says she’s always been more drawn to sculpture and architecture than prints; when you’re working in “three dimensions it’s like you’re creating this little space around your body,” she enthused. This season the focus felt more surface than shape focused, understandably so; it takes time to fill a hole in the heart.
