Edeline Lee has an interesting way of getting at her collections. She's intrigued by signs and symbols, visual clues to some recalled or fantasized experience. This season, for instance, her main motif was piano keys—a metonym, she explained at her London fashion week presentation, for her memories of childhood. She played piano as a kid, you see, and so here she experimented with black and white graphics, stripe-based patterns, and paneled piano pleats. All this threatened to be dangerously literal, but Lee stopped just short of that. Her most successful pieces were the ones furthest removed from the source material, like a trim pencil dress in vaguely tribal weave, the color-blocked sleeveless jackets, or a red Grecian dress draped off to one side. There was a Constructivist feel to Lee's understated white, black, and blue print gown, and the paneled construction of the collection's checkerboard looks was genuinely impressive. Lee may have been inspired by her childhood, but the effort here was decidedly grown-up.
