In business for more than 10 years, Nili Lotan has managed to sustain both a loyal clientele and a fresh, unaffected point of view. You could describe her look as a study in contrasts: masculine vs. feminine, slouchy vs. slim, sexy vs. covered-up. It all goes back to her belief that women should simply wear what they love, then tweak and refine their personal style. “At the end of the day, these are just normal clothes,” she said. “It’s about how you put them together.”
As such, Lotan isn’t a designer who searches for disparate references each season; instead, she finds new ways to channel her muses, particularly Patti Smith. Several of the looks mirrored the blouse and skinny scarf Smith wore on the cover of her album Horses, which was pinned to Lotan’s mood board. But there was another, less-expected woman on the wall, too: Frida Kahlo. “I was thinking about what it would look like if we combined Patti and Frida’s wardrobes,” Lotan explained. The most surprising clothes were the ones that leaned more toward Kahlo; Lotan featured more color than ever (namely shades of maroon, olive, and indigo) and riffed on traditional Mexican garments, like embroidered linen dresses and ponchos that mimicked rebozos, the fringed, blanketlike scarves Kahlo often wrapped around her shoulders. Even Lotan’s signature pieces got a Mexico-in-the-1940s update, like that charmeuse slip dress everyone’s been wearing: Here, it came in a saturated ruby red. Lotan also offered a new way to wear it, layered over a striped button-down; elsewhere, she paired a black slip with super-wide-leg ivory pants. Whether that new, slightly haphazard spin on day-to-night layering was inspired by Smith, Kahlo, or Lotan herself, it certainly reflected how women want to dress these days.
