A few hours after leaving Mara Hoffman’s sun-soaked Union Square studio, it dawned on this reviewer that sustainability hadn’t come up once. That’s a good thing. While there’s always more to say about organic, plant-based, and recycled materials—Hoffman uses lots of hemp, alpaca, and Tencel, and much of her swimwear is made with regenerated nylon—her real goal is for her designs to be the main draw. Resort’s sculptural knits, poplin dresses, and snug, portrait-collar jackets will qualify as surprising yet wearable items, regardless of whether you’re up to speed on Hoffman’s earth-loving missive.
Bigger surprises included the bold, python-printed dresses and a 3-D rose crop top. At any other brand, the latter could feel downright risqué, but Hoffman’s customer will wear it as it’s styled here: with loose ivory jeans and flats. But maybe it’s a disservice to consider Hoffman’s clothes only in the context of the diaphanous, dreamy, typically loose silhouettes she’s so known for. Sure, she cuts a great oversize suit, but there’s always been a sense of warmth and sensuality at the heart of her label. It peeks through in Resort’s new square-neck bodysuits, zipped-up denim skirts, and ribbed knit dresses with “magic boob” details (i.e. ribs in concentric rings around the bust, a nod to Jean Paul Gaultier’s ’90s sweaters, Hoffman said). They’re pieces that would make you feel sexy without being overexposed, and that would nudge you to embrace your femininity and inner magic.
Speaking of magic, Hoffman has always been into female energy, spirituality, and mysticism, so Resort’s shoot location was quite literally her dream come true. She’s been going upstate for years, but only recently stumbled upon Roy Kanwit’s Taconic Sculpture Park, where enormous marble and limestone heads, dragons, and otherworldly beings are hidden among the trees. Kanwit has described them as a connection between the earth and the heavens, and he seems to regard nature in a specifically feminine context; one of the heads is described as a woman he named “Mother Earth.”
That ties in with Hoffman’s sustainable, low-impact materials: She wants to be able to walk among those statues and meditate on their significance without feeling like she’s doing something contradictory with her own brand. By now, she should feel more than confident.
