For such a small and intimate label, Hillier Bartley packs some serious sartorial punch. Katie Hillier and Luella Bartley, who launched the brand in 2015, rather masterfully navigate the fine line between grown-up elegance and eccentricity. This concise collection, one of two they produce each year, only served to reinforce this nuanced quality, picking up on last season’s themes of deconstruction and distortion and taking it to further extremes. “I really wanted to cement this idea of us playing with tailoring,” said Bartley, who took a Savile Row stalwart—the classic double-breasted men’s suit—and instilled it with a sensuous and womanly appeal.
A slouchy silk suit in emerald green or almond had the sumptuous feel of an evening gown. Long lines of inlaid buttons on sleeves, trouser legs, and the seams of a very “secretary” checked pencil skirt allowed looks to be hitched up, unbuttoned, and creatively customized. Knits were taken to the outer limits of oversize then instilled with a quartet of drawstrings to adjust the fit both on the sleeve and on the body. “I’ve always tucked my shirt or my socks into my trousers and played with the way things fall in a styling way,” said Bartley. “Now I’ve transferred those styling tricks into the design. It was a really fun exercise.”
It wouldn’t be Hillier Bartley, of course, without the occasional tongue-in-cheek touch. Though the designers’ divine crepe satin dresses with fringed belt details were revisited in a more relaxed silhouette here, they also added a strapless cocktail frock fashioned from a men’s tuxedo to the evening mix. Embellished with an enormous taffeta bow, it was the kind of thing, said Bartley, that Nigella Lawson might have worn to a 1980s Hunt Ball. That decade also gave rise to a latex pussy-bow blouse pulled straight from the dance floor of the Blitz nightclub. Alongside a fresh iteration of the lantern bag and the new boxy, structural Cassette bag were dart earrings that nodded to English pub culture—none of which could be outshone by the loud-and-proud presence of a Union Jack suit. “We call it the Brexit—or the anti-Brexit—suit,” said Bartley with a laugh. “I don’t know where it came from, but it felt right.”
