Maggie Marilyn designed her new collection in February, at the tail end of New Zealand’s summer. She spent it at her parents’ beach house in the Bay of Islands, “a little place at the bottom of the world.” As remote as that sounds, Marilyn definitely has a global perspective. With its ruffled shirting, track pants, and slip dresses, this outing is as trend-conscious as her previous efforts. The difference is in its unbridled use of color: sunshine yellow, electric pink, fuchsia, a deep forest green.
Marilyn’s twin dedications to versatility and practicality are what distinguish her label from its trendy competitors. A silk slip dress in a repp-tie stripe is sold with a ruffled sash: Sashless, it’s sleek and streamlined; with sash, it’s prime material for the street style photographers. Tailored blazers and shirts, meanwhile, are trimmed with rouleau buttons which march down hips or around shoulder seams. Unbuttoned, they create peplum flares and expose sexy flashes of skin. Another jacket comes with a removable pleated hem. Even more interesting from a practical standpoint are her experiments with ruffled silk habotai and denim, which she combined in a strapless dress and a zip-front jacket, both of which, believe it or not, are entirely machine washable. Marilyn is of the firm belief that the silk actually looks better the more you wash it—soft and frayed.
Adaptability is an asset, perhaps especially among millennials who are spending less on fashion than they are on gadgets and tech, but Marilyn shouldn’t ignore the virtues of effortless simplicity. The best pieces here might’ve been the most straightforward: striped silk shirtdresses with pouf sleeves in sunshine yellow or cherry red.
