Downstairs at this excellently catered presentation, a group of models of different ages stood in a circle, held hands, and swayed. This was a reference to protest and resistance that was both as loose and lucid as many of the garments in this very strong collection of gently austere womenswear. There were a great number of military references; a trenchcoat in olive cotton was an almost exact adaptation of the rain trench issued to conscripts in the Soviet-era Czechoslovak People’s Army—Nehera’s co-owner Ladislav Zdút was among their number—and a more closely fitted version in a softer jersey-feel fabrication was printed in a version of that military’s adaptation of the East German Strichtarn raindrop-pattern camouflage. The orange abstract animalia-looking print on chiffon skirts and dresses was based on another camouflage, Zdút said, that lined the military-issue garments.
More military references included linen M-65 jackets in black and pants cuffed loose in cotton with lower-than-functional knee patches. A fantastic caramel coated dress—designed, as managing director Bibiana Zdútová explained, to be considered an “overdress”—was cut out of parachute panels in a synthetic blend that felt, as many of the fabrics here, good to the hand. Another huge swath of a garment was the square but soft-shouldered dress in red jersey rayon, white cotton, and that orange camo, which came slashed under each arm. There was a lot of seersucker-y, striped, puckered silk linen, strong especially in a skirt layered with an opaque synthetic apron. A pleated calf-length skirt in black leather that was reversible (to be worn brown-side-up) was presented alongside a same-fabrication oversize poncho.
Neutral, natural colorways only sometimes galvanized by punchier shades added to the passive resistance vibes emanated by those swaying models downstairs in a collection that repurposed the apparel of combat to signal a far more serene state of being.
