Marysia Reeves spent a month on Shelter Island this summer, and by the time she’d returned to the city, she was already nostalgic for Long Island’s picturesque, all-American feeling. Her Spring 2019 collection is an homage to those warmer, lazier days, with a classic red, white, and blue palette and new checkerboard motifs lifted from her family’s picnic blankets.
Marysia superfans will be pleasantly surprised by those eye-popping, vaguely retro prints, especially on the patchwork pieces. One rash guard was collaged with cobalt, pink, red, and baby blue gingham, and a high-rise bikini mixed laser-cut eyelet with micro- and macro-checks. Other suits were updated with novel flower baubles or plastic chain straps, and a few blush maillots and caftans felt like an earthier extension of her Resort offering.
The big news was in Reeves’s growing ready-to-wear selection, including her first-ever denim. The work jackets, cropped trousers, and ruffled dresses came in a surprisingly lightweight indigo, and in a few instances, Reeves mixed them with the swimwear. The opening look—a lace-up denim prairie skirt styled with a twist-front bikini top—mirrored other designers’ ideas about wearing swimwear “in real life,” not just at the beach. That tank-style bikini did the work of a T-shirt or cropped blouse, but felt a lot fresher.
Similarly, Reeves pointed out a clean, empire-waist ivory column dress, explaining that it could be worn as a cover-up with a scalloped bikini peeking out—or you could simply wear it alone at cocktail hour. Brides getting married in tropical destinations might even consider it for their rehearsal dinner, morning-after brunch, or any number of wedding-adjacent events that call for something white, low-key, and elegant.
