Wondering where Bonnie Young has been for Fall and Resort? Sequestered in Los Angeles with her singer-songwriter daughter Celia Babini, who was a contestant on The Voice. With plenty of time to think, Young decided to go back to her roots, as it were, and link both her charitable work and her sustainability initiatives to her Spring collection, as she had done when she was designing childrenswear. The idea is simply that each collection will be aligned with a different organization, which will benefit from sales of the clothes. This season, Young chose Innocence in Danger, with which she’s been involved for 15 years.
“I don’t really just want to design a product for the sake of putting beautiful clothing in the world,” said Young, who worked on making a “streamlined” collection that focused on longevity (read sustainability). They’re “just beautiful, quality pieces to add to your wardrobe,” noted the designer, understating the case considerably. Young might be described as a “niche” designer because her collections are so tightly edited, but every piece has a reason for—and a lightness of—being. For Spring, there’s a digital floral print rendered on organdy as well as upcycled Japanese denim (which might limit quantity, but not quality), a “denim” capsule that’s all a linen-cotton mix, umpteen-ply cashmere sweaters in pastel and neutral tones, and airy pieces in shades of white, like silk wrap pants worn with a flounce-cuff blouse and a linen kimono jacket. Talk about a breath of fresh air. . . . Young does romance well, and a lacy Italian-knit dress made using leftover yarn would be a dream wherever it was worn—to a garden party or down a wedding aisle.
