After tweaking for a few seasons, Christian Wijnants has achieved harmony in his process and in-store: pre-collections and collections now run into one another, with timeless pieces and carryovers mixing easily with more experimental (and expensive) ones involving hand-embroidery, special prints, and the like.
Since the fun, experimental pieces take more time to develop, the designer tends to keep them for Paris Fashion Week. The balance here is more “buy now, wear now”—aka the tubular knits and flowy separates that customers return for again and again, season after season.
For Pre-Fall, the designer lingered on in Persia, offering his “traveler-explorers” easy, fluid pieces in cotton or silk and ceramic colors. New this season are ample, draped cotton-silk corduroy trousers, for example. “When you’re traveling, you just want freedom of movement,” the designer notes. To wit: pajama-inspired pieces and shirts that are easy yet done in stiffer silk than usual. The tunic tops are winning, as is a second-skin smocked top paired with technical fabric pants. Elsewhere, the designer has been toying with classical tie motifs, which appear blown-up and pixelated on jacquard knitwear—a hint of the more intricate knits the designer intends to explore in the season ahead.
For the first time, Wijnants ventured into trenchcoats. A tobacco-color one is of the water-repellent variety; others are more decorative, a riff on last season’s silver lamé standout.
Wijnants favors easy looks: soft, wooly knits with ample sleeves, soft denims and “indoor outerwear” are some of his most popular signatures. No wonder he never loses anyone along the way.
