Summer may feel like a distant memory now, obscured by the fracas of fashion month, but the season came to vivid life in Maryam Nassir Zadeh’s latest offering. The designer imagined it as a series of distinct, personal chapters. The first was bright, open, and inspirational, colored by the time she spent traveling with her family in Italy; a heady vision of days in Palermo, Rome, Puglia, and Capri. But vacations always end—a second chapter told the story of returning to New York’s harsher, often tumultuous realities. Zadeh’s denouement lands somewhere in the middle: grounded in a life at home, and informed by the perspective of time abroad.
The designer’s Spring lineup was an organic expression of those ideas, not too beholden to plot. There is a certain intimacy that seems to mark Zadeh’s clothes—they’re both familiar and uncanny. Take the gentle volume of a sculptural metallic organza bomber or crisp poplin dresses, which came unexpectedly tied, halterlike, at the neck. Ensembles were alternate strokes retro-beachy and rustic; likewise in palette, pops of lime and cherry red drew a sharp contrast to shades of blush and gold that recalled the gessoed walls of Zadeh’s summer travels—a lovely dissonance.
Still, for many MNZ shoppers, the biggest news here will be the exciting trials in reworked denim. A pair of pants, patchworked in varying washes from cornflower on up to indigo, will be a sure sellout, ditto a softly fraying jacket made from a pair of jeans.
