Everyone loves a comeback. When retailing wunderkind Sarah Rutson joined the Collected Group 15 months ago, she had her work cut out for her, but she’d already bought and edited every brand in the world, so she knew what she needed to do. Two weeks later, she had steered three brands back to solid ground (Joie, Equipment, and Current/Elliott).
For Joie, the numbers are in and they speak for themselves. The Fall collection was a bumper crop for the California label. That’s not a huge surprise: Rutson is laser focused on reinjecting Joie into almost every woman’s life, aiming for “inclusivity with a very clear message,” she said during a showroom visit in Paris this week.
She seems to have found the recipe. For Spring, the brand took its cues from Peggy Lipton (of Mod Squad fame) and Jacqueline Bisset, minus any caricature. That might mean cropped denim culottes or a breezy blush button-down dress with feminine gatherings. It might be a macramé-inspired top with fringe. Colors were ’70s-inflected, too: rust, blush, marigold, and rich blues led the way on blouses, leather jackets, and gauzy (but not too) tops and dresses. A denim suit looked office crisp, but then again you could break everything up and have fun with it. Python made an appearance in several iterations, from gray tones to buttery yellows. Pretty knitwear basics offered wardrobe-building layering options, while soft leather pieces captured the sunset colors of the season. Soft dresses moved beyond beachwear without overthinking the thing. Nothing felt tricked up.
Joie is a something-for-everyone proposition, and it is ramping up its fluency fast. Rutson understands how to talk to women on a broad scale; if she stays the course, this will be a brand to reckon with.
