Lee Mathews and Natalia Grzybowski are sticking to their strengths. In a showroom in Paris, the design duo joked that what they really love and do best are the three S’s: shirts, shirtdresses, and shirt jackets. They’ve got plenty of options for the Spring season, having gived corporate pinstripe shirts a Western yoke, cut dresses in a wide A-line shape, and made boyish chore coats in over-dyed organic cotton. Because the concept is so tried and true—and salable—the pair don’t have to experiment much; each collection is a fine-tuning of ideas rather than an introduction of dozens of others.
Still, Spring 2020 feels a bit more momentous for the pair. Not only does it mark 20 years in business for Mathews, but its lookbook stars Gemma Ward. The model is a real-life customer of the brand, shopping out of its Sydney, Australia stores, and she’s exactly the type of relaxed, smart woman Mathews and Grzybowski are after. Their big proposition this season, aside from those three S’s, is a wide range of bright, big dresses. Tent shapes come in beige florals, orange stripes, and a robin’s egg blue with lightly puffed sleeves. On the hanger, some of these frocks can look a bit over-designed, but on the body, all this thinking and functionality plays out quite well. A bubble dress in beige and navy features all the bells and whistles but looks functional on Ward in the look book. The designers spoke about trying to take day clothes and make them gorgeous; these little details work hard to do just that.
