A funny thing happened on the way to a Fall concept. John Elliott and his new women’s designer, Cara Campagnoli, were idly chatting when they realized they both hail from the same coastal town north of San Francisco. They also learned, upon further digging, that their grandparents were friends. A few calls back home confirmed the synchronicity. Thus a concept was born: “An atmospheric beachfront house,” Elliott explained during a preview, among the “twisted cypress and ever-present mist of Northern California”—the kind their grandparents called home. “Very Hitchcockian,” the designers agreed.
Suitably, the collection took place in the Navy Yard of Brooklyn in a dimly lit, wet-floored industrial warehouse used to make modular homes. The show focused around a skeleton of a house from which the models emerged. The unfinished space fit neatly with Elliott’s experiments in process, among them a padded jacket nicely faded so that missing patches left ghostly marks, akin to removing furniture from a weathered deck; and a bomber jacket made from insulation-like material in a method so exacting that it can’t be produced in large quantities. An abstract print on polar fleece derived from Elliott’s grandparents’ own wallpaper, and a laboriously stitched floor-length poncho could have been lifted from an old homespun rug. A proprietary tie-dye technique involved bleaching rolls of fabric and overdyeing it with rich indigo; otherwise the palette remained in the moody zone of misty-gray, green, and sand.
Elliott’s myriad collaborations returned as well, including those curiously seamless down jackets with Descente and leather biker jackets with Blackmeans, both Japanese companies, plus two new shades, brown and black, of his runaway-hit sneaker with Nike, the LeBron James x John Elliott Icon. Add to that an entirely new apparel collaboration with Caterpillar, a sleek departure from the construction company’s bulky connotations. Elliott said he was going for a long and black look so that it could segue into night. Very Hitchcockian.
As a whole, this was Elliott’s elevated streetwear elevated further—a familiar wardrobe wrapped in concept. The women’s side, introduced more recently and now fully incorporated, seemed to have found its place as a feminized version of men’s, but not too removed from the unisex silhouette that streetwear demands. The matured vision will need a home to call its own. Enter Elliott’s just-signed new store on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, where his line is based and manufactured, opening this Spring. Every facet of his label will be housed here, including his line with the City of Los Angeles, proceeds from which go to a neighborhood in need. You heard it here first.
