It's been a decade since Australian designer Josh Goot launched his label. Now he's well established back home, with stores in Sydney and Melbourne, freshly restructured and once again turning his attention to international growth. "We've been kind of bubbling along, but now we're going to push a little harder," he said during his Pre-Spring presentation in Paris. He's also moving forward in terms of materials, movement, and construction for an exploration of modern ensemble dressing.
Goot's ideals of ease stand at the crossroads of architecture and sportiness. But where his style was once body-con, the designer is now focusing on more grown-up, fluid constructions worn in layers, as in a beguiling "evening sport" teal-and-white apron dress that cinched at the hip, or a white tailored jacket and pants with black piping that Goot called "a wardrobe unto itself." Elsewhere, a simple wrap tank dress folded easily around the body, descending into an asymmetrical hem. "The idea is that the clothes will evolve with movement," the designer noted of a flared skirt that stopped just short of A-line, and elongated, oversize shapes with a recurring side-split theme.
For Spring, Goot dialed down the prints, forsaking major motifs in favor of new styles of knits, like an off-the-shoulder top, and a more textural finish on silk pieces designed for layering, voluminous menswear-inspired trousers with silver inserts, a digital interpretation of a brushstroke on jacquard, or a surf-graphic-inflected print. Color came through in a navy and mandarin elongated top and skirt ensemble ample enough that some will probably just choose to wear the top as a dress. One of his signatures, the softly tailored trench, now comes with men's cotton shirting in front and a coated gray marle in back.
After much consideration, Goot is also moving into accessories. Here, too, his attitude is that less is more for sleek leather totes with colorful edging, thick-soled slides that are "somewhere between a dress shoe and a flotation device," and fold-over handbags done in collaboration with L.A.-based Australian designer Jonathan Zawada, realized by the "neo-luxury" brand Feit.
