No matter the season, Barbara Bui will usually make sure to include sharp tailoring, deconstructed day-to-night looks, a great leather jacket or two, and a certain cross-cultural flair. These latest men’s and women’s collections ticked off all those boxes with an added British-inflected twist. Whether suiting in gray Shetland wool, tartan blanket skirts (think winter pareos), or velvet workwear pants, she found fresh ways to rehash the classics.
Those Shetland-wool pieces, for instance, had a pleasing rough quality that offset Bui’s characteristic sleekness. For a while, the designer was known as much for her knits as for her leather, and it was nice to see so many top-to-toe variations here—from extra-long scarves to leg warmers. In ecru and heather gray, these cozy total looks were the season’s standouts. But many other stand-alone pieces come to mind, most notably the black aviator jacket that is a reissue from an original that dates back 20 years (and that she continues to wear today). Padded tartan jackets could be styled up or down; here, they appear with leather pants or a Pop face print that bore a faint resemblance to the work of Tom Wesselmann.
Bui is at a point where she no longer needs to prove herself; she interprets directional ideas from elsewhere through a vaguely ’90s filter that people respond to well. She reiterated several times how stylized “Rangers” (what we call combat boots) signaled a less contrived look—“it’s not overworked,” she said—and you would be hard-pressed to disagree.
