Brandon Maxwell likes to chat with his fans. He talks to them online, in stores, and when they recognize him on the street. And he’s not just accepting accolades, Maxwell explained at an appointment today at his Midtown studio, where, for the first time, he was showing one of his pre-collections; he also seeks feedback from the women he “serves,” as he sees it. “What I’ve realized is that they’re not going into stores and looking at a dress and thinking, Oh, this was inspired by a trip Brandon took to wherever,” he said. “What they’re thinking is, Does this dress work for me?” The more Maxwell talks to fans, and his clients, and his female friends and family and staff, the more he designs with “Does this work for me?” in mind. It’s a good mantra for a pre-fall collection: Relieved of the need to create a spectacle, this season Maxwell got down to the business of designing punchy, appealing, wearable clothes.
The punch came courtesy of the palette. By degrees, Maxwell’s collections have gotten more and more colorful since he launched his brand with strictly black and white looks; this time out, the neutrals felt like an afterthought, with bold shades of pink and red and orange playing the starring roles, and a kicky lipstick print doing a showy cameo. The colors gave some pop to neat-as-a-pin daywear looks like Maxwell’s sleeveless, wasp-waist shirtdresses in cotton satin, one of several items that gave this outing a bit of a preppy mien. Tidy shirting was a theme, some of it embellished with novelty elements like a wavy gazar hem, or a blouson sleeve; another was menswear-inspired tailoring, cut with Maxwell’s typical precision.
Generally speaking, the Maxwell woman likes to look polished, though she may, on occasion, slip on a pair of his ripped jeans (the best seller in his Spring 2020 show, he said) or toss on a slouchy sweater or easygoing knit frock with a seam-detailed bust and bell-shaped sleeves. That latter look, in black, was, Maxwell reported, his mother’s favorite of all the looks here, which underlined the sense you got, looking at these clothes, that he was trying to whip up a little something for everyone—the woman hot to trot for a molded leather bra top or petal pink “baby shorts,” as Maxwell termed them, and the woman inclined to pair a nubby heather gray sweater with a dainty pleated skirt covered in silver sequins, and so on. What this approach lacks in rigor it makes up for in generosity—there were, truly, pieces here that could work for just about anyone.
