Australian brand Camilla and Marc celebrates its tenth anniversary this year. So it was only fitting, really, to find that the new Camilla and Marc collection was, in some ways, a greatest-hits compilation. That was no accident—as Camilla Freeman-Topper explained, her starting point this season was the Russian Matryoshka doll, whose dolls-within-dolls construction offered a nice analogy to the brand's design development. Some of the old favorites were here, in new forms—the once-signature Camilla and Marc wide-leg pant, for example, made a reappearance in a dramatic jumpsuit; the house's drop-crotch trouser silhouette, meanwhile, was updated in denim.
Elsewhere, there were fresh takes on the brand's true stock-in-trade, its kicky cocktail dresses and sharply cut blazers. More generally, the abstract zebra print and somewhat Slavic graphic jacquard both spoke to the Freeman siblings' long-standing interest in rich, sculpt-able material. What felt new here—or, more specifically, what felt mature—was this collection's sense of architecture. Over the years, Freeman-Topper and her brother, Marc Freeman, have gotten very good at dispensing with the frippery of their clothes and focusing on strong shapes; here, that development was summed up by the python-printed leather pieces in white, and the black cocktail dresses with blush-colored fabric revealed through drapes and folds. The standout piece may have been the simplest one in the collection: an orange tank made of layered silk that had been draped diagonally. Very chic, that, and very grown-up. In ten years, Camilla and Marc have figured out how to do more with less.
