This season, Lauren Manoogian was able to check off one item on her bucket list. The designer and her small team were granted access to stage a photo shoot inside the home and workshop of the late artist and woodworker George Nakashima, whom Manoogian has always admired. He was responsible for catalyzing the American craft movement in the 1940s, and his striking, organic furniture has long served as inspiration for a multitude of artists and designers such as Manoogian. She brought her Fall 2019 collection to the Nakashima Foundation for Peace in New Hope, Pennsylvania, and photographed the garments in and around the grounds of the space: a long, fine-gauge knit dress in front of a giant piece of driftwood, a draped Peruvian wool scarf in the middle of a sea of Nakashima chairs, a brown cardigan and matching trousers outside beneath a snow-dusted tree branch. Manoogian’s clothes looked more than at home—they belonged there.
Fall also saw the designer introduce a line of shoes inspired by Japanese house slippers, as well as an expanded offering of knit bags. More outerwear was on display as well, as was a new range of dark indigo, utilitarian denim. Her color palette remains neutral and her silhouettes simple, but Manoogian never fails to give an artistic bent to her sustainable designs. Her collections, including this latest one, are about the luxury of craft and the strength of minimalism, two things that feel appealing right now in a crazy, noisy world. Manoogian can rest assured that Nakashima would have been proud to host her.
