With their latest offering, Apiece Apart designers Starr Hout and Laura Cramer stressed the notion of a woman becoming who she aspires to be. It was an apt metaphor for a brand that, over the course of a single season, seems to have progressed by leaps and bounds. Apiece Apart's Fall offering boasts exponentially more pattern than the label has ever shown before and a newly conceptual approach to the mix-and-match basics they've made their name on. Hout and Cramer cited the eighties downtown gallery scene as an inspiration, and indeed, there was a bit of Alex Katz around the edges of a multihued-stripe print. (It looked smart on a shift, smarter still on an A-line midi skirt.) The designers described another fabric, a fairly literal interpretation of television static, as an allegory for carving out space in the noise of a New York day. All of it struck a keen balance between graphic-art-inspired prints and cozier, organic elements, like gorgeous nubby wool coats and ponchos in custom Peruvian knits (the latter's own stark appeal saves wearers from looking as though they've stumbled out of a head shop). For Apiece Apart, the shift from Spring ’13 to Fall ’14 seems a bit extensive and a bit cerebral to be dismissed as pure organic growth. If anything, it feels like an exuberant creative exercise gone very right. That's to say nothing of the fact that they've grown by nearly sixty stockists over the course of three seasons. Sounds like they're well on their way to becoming the brand they want to be.
