At Lafayette , creative director Emily Smith continues to dig into the history of the brand’s namesake address building. They discovered that before it was a garment factory, it used to be a printing press, so their entire collection was later inspired by paper. Well, it turns out that before that, in the 1920 years, this building was the post office for all of Lower Manhattan. “So I thought ‘let’s dig in,’ and my team came back with all these great little ideas,” Smith revealed during an appointment at the brand’s showroom. For the Pre-Fall collection, she and her team plunge into the (almost forgotten) wonderful world of the art and stationery of sending handwritten notes. method. So while the vintage postcard-inspired print might seem a little obvious, her execution is anything but. On a delicate pleated jersey dress, the print was applied to straps of varying widths, creating a deconstructed collage effect. It was paired with a cashmere sweater with an enlarged print that itself was “a bit washed” so it had a distressed, fuzzy texture. It’s not quite a match – there’s a wonderfully weird and youthful spirit about the match. Elsewhere, the same print morphed into a beautiful cotton monochrome tan print, a champagne jacquard print on silk, and blue denim, all evoking different moods.
Trench coats and cotton shirts feature “tear-away” button details inspired by the way stamps “snap” when you flip through a stamp sheet. The wavy lines of the canceled stamp showed subtle pleated stripes on an orange sleeveless dress and another dark navy long-sleeve dress. They’re “our summer vacation outfits when we’re writing postcards,” jokes Smith. Detail of vintage postal uniforms appear on the collars of shirts and small jackets; a denim one that looks like a modern take on a chores jacket has two pockets on the hip, one fastened with a button on the left side of the chest and the other The side, is just an outline of where the pocket is.
Leather and suede are always popular at Lafayette 148. A shirt and trouser combo in light-as-air beige suede and a pair of chunky fisherman sandals lined with teddy wool were a standout. A boxy mahogany cropped jacket in paper-thin leather with two flap pockets was well proportioned, but it was the buttons—slightly larger, silver, covered in the same Leather – makes it (ahem) worth writing about.
