Jaclyn Hodes has just returned to New York from Topanga Canyon, where she had gone to live the California dream a few years ago. It was a pilgrimage the designer felt destined to make since 2011, when she began practicing Kundalini yoga. “I had done yoga for 10 years before that, but Kundalini was the full fantasy lifestyle,” she said. “There’s a way to dress, a way to be.” Though the reality of that fantasy left something to be desired (hence her return to the East Coast), it gave Hodes a better understanding of herself and her seven-year-old brand.
Her translation of yogic principles is best illustrated by the nonrestrictive drape of her signature bias-cut silk slips, which are colored with 100 percent natural plant dyes by a Bali-based artist. Unlike the wave of independent home dyers, who use avocado pits and crushed petals to deliver a delicate tint, Hodes’s pieces are richly pigmented by locally harvested material. “They’re literally machete-ing the mango leaf, pulverizing it, and putting it in a vat,” she said.
Those pulverized greens render a rich mustard-seed yellow, which Hodes used throughout her new collection. Other hues were culled from the colors she encountered at different times of day to create “an almost blurred vision of the Topanga scenery.” The deep turquoise, for instance, was a blend of indigo and mango leaf that recalled sea and sky, while the bordeaux-color backless dress came from crushed sappan bark on silk.
Awaveawake iterates on the same silhouettes each season—the slip, the loose pant, the robe, the cape—which can get a little predictable. Hodes’s strength lies in her application of color theory to add a therapeutic layer to these basic shapes, such as the soothing effect of a pale pink or the grounding energy of a deep red. Many women will buy into that, particularly those New Yorkers still clinging to their own L.A. fantasy.
