Karen Walker’s approach to her pre-fall collection—and the new decade for that matter—is to start with a blank page. The designer said she’s “embracing the analog” and taking time again to draw with pencil and paper. It’s from the former that the collection, dubbed Graphite, takes its name and grayscale palette.
In a bold and successful move, Walker avoided prints, a house signature, to focus on the purity of line. Her silhouette is defined by strong, bold shoulders, and there’s a functional military feeling to some of the outerwear. The designer’s use of pinstripes, particularly effective on a dress with bias detailing, was another take on line, while animal-print jacquard and a metallic knit added pattern and color. Walker used a slash of bright red for her hit skating dress, which she pulled from the archive. Designed in the late 1990s and worn by Björk and Sienna Miller back then, it was made of yards and yards of fabric and created a beautiful sense of movement, which will certainly propel this designer into 2020.
