Adam Lippes came across his muse serendipitously this season. At first, he fell for the British painter Hannah Gluckman’s flowers. It wasn’t until he began researching Gluck, as she was called, that he learned she was a gender non-conformist who wore her hair cropped short and sported jackets and ties just as often as fancy lace and jacquard frocks. The chance discovery produced a rich collection that spanned the gamut from menswear-inflected tailoring (more than usual for this designer) to delicate dresses. Lippes doesn’t wear his politics on his sleeve, but he very much believes in inclusivity.
These clothes will charm the women he spends weeks on the road cultivating at the country’s best stores. He says customers are savvier than ever about fabrics, and he’s developed some beauties. Consider the variety of lace on offer, from the most ephemeral Chantilly to successively more substantial mohair-embroidered lace and corded lace stitched with silk. Consider the range of knits he’s had made in Madagascar, from fine to lofty, including polo and crewneck cashmeres intarsia’d in a discreet “A” pattern. And consider the long dress made from burnout gold silk velvet re-embroidered with tiny silver threads. There hasn’t been a more captivating material this season.
As for the tailoring, which season by season becomes a bigger part of his business, Lippes likes the look of full, slightly flared culottes. He cut them in myriad fabrics and paired them with knee-high boots dripping in silk fringe—a surprising, kicky combination. Volumes were likewise effusive on two other looks: a blush pink jumpsuit paired with a matching pouf-sleeve shirt and an oversize white tuxedo shirt buttoned to the neck and worn with black pants. That last look seems particularly Gluck-ian. In a world that’s increasingly intolerant of difference, it was satisfying to see her through Lippes’s eyes.
