“Comfort, but make it fashion.” After 12 months of Zooms, how have we not heard that one before? Joseph Altuzarra was the clever designer who came up with it on a video call with Vogue editors earlier this week. He did develop his new fall collection with an eye to comfort, but that doesn’t mean it’s dressed down. Rather, Altuzarra seemed to be thinking about ways to synthesize the polish and sophistication his brand stands for with the ease we’ve all grown accustomed to over the last year.
The collection shoot was staged in a well-appointed Manhattan townhouse. A tufted velvet couch and fireplace drove home the loungeability of the heavy-gauge ribbed knit layers, cashmere underpinnings, and jersey tailoring he made for fall. But should we indeed be sprung from our various confinements by the time these clothes are available, they’ll help smooth our transitions into more formal situations. For both the glamorous and the germ-averse, he’s showing many of the looks with elbow-length gloves.
Typically Altuzarra sketches his collections, but this time around he said he experimented with collage, landing on butterfly wings as a motif. As we shed our chrysalises, the re-emergence dress may very well become the piece we splurge on. There are a good many contenders for the role here, including a couple that revive the popular tie-dyed frocks Altuzarra made half a decade ago. The standouts, though, are definitely the butterfly wing dresses. Effortless but impactful in their panoply of colors, they were quite laborious to make; each one was arranged on pleated construction paper, so the factory could engineer the prints as precisely as was required.
Altuzarra also takes the prize for most tempting and timely footwear. For anyone not quite ready to shed their house slippers when the lockdowns finally lift, he’s made delicate shearling trimmed sandals with drop pearl embellishments.
