Everybody’s moving to California. So we New Yorkers keep hearing, although evidence on the street suggests there are plenty of us still here. Count Apiece Apart designers Starr Hout and Laura Cramer as two of the Big Apple dwellers who have been seduced by the dream of heading out West, a place, we are told, where you can still do all the things you can do here, but where there’s room to spread out and, as Hout put it, “design your own life.” Cramer and Hout are staying put, at least for now, but their latest collection drew on the California allure, conjuring a tone of ultra-ease and elegant rusticity.
That tone was effectively conveyed by this season’s good-looking stripes: Cramer and Hout started graphic and then found myriad ways to soften the edges of the stripes, smudging them via quilting or Miyake-style micro-pleats, for instance, or creating a painterly stripe used in a caftan-style dress that seemed tailor-made for a Sunday in Topanga. Many of the fabrications engaged a similar dialogue between structure and softness, notably the much-deployed cotton canvas, seen here in earthy tones of cream and clay and olive drab, which Hout and Cramer washed, a process that introduced a touch of crinkle. The sense of hand was echoed in the terrific crocheted knits.
The canny thing about this collection was that it didn’t seem like some kind of bohemian fever dream. There were urbane touches, like silver Lurex knits, and work-friendly pieces such as a canvas wrap jacket or a straight skirt in an ikat-like print. The fact that this outing boasted at least as many jumpsuits with disciplined silhouettes as it did breezy dresses dispelled any notion that these were clothes made just for lolling about. They were loll-friendly, to be sure, but with just enough snap to serve women walking at a fast clip down the streets of Manhattan.
