Although the black suit jacket with laced sleeves that opens Sandro’s lookbook easily ranks as one of the lineup’s must-haves, it isn’t entirely representative of the full collection. A spin around the Boulevard Haussmann showroom yielded an offering that swelled with mood-boosting colors, lively patterns, and an overall tendency toward creative expression. With so many hybrid ideas on display—vintage floral scarf prints shown pajama-style; men’s shirting hole-punched with pretty eyelets; rocker zigzags as lace inserts; double-breasted pantsuits and gas station jumpsuits in Impressionist hues; more football-style lacing, this time on denim—the takeaway was that shoppers will have no issue finding pieces that speak to their personal preferences. Indeed, the improvised style so often on display in Cuba was offered as the umbrella message to make sense of the mix, and it was spelled out in beading or bold type when it wasn’t suggested via the palette or patterns.
The other prevailing concept involved the constant coexistence of masculine and feminine, so that a banker’s striped shirt was reconceived with fluted sleeves or else with a coy cut-out down the back. Regarding the latter, anyone who watched A Bigger Splash only to obsess over the clothes worn by Tilda Swinton’s character might delight at the similarity to her standby shirtdress. Props to the design studio for looking beyond runway trends when aggregating the best of what’s out there. And credit also goes to Evelyne Chétrite for overseeing a range that came across more elevated in detail than usual—it lived up to its mid-luxury positioning.
If there was any lapse, it was the lookbook itself, which missed an opportunity to capture the season’s upbeat personality and diverse spirit. More and more, Sandro is reaching a wider group of women, and these images, ideally, should be reflecting that.
