“Big Mama,” one of artist Elena Stonaker’s larger-than-life beaded denim sculptures, has taken up temporary residence in Mara Hoffman’s Lafayette Street boutique as part of an ongoing collaboration the designer has with Studio Archive Project. Soft sculpture is one of Stonaker’s signatures, and if you think about it, Hoffman’s kind of in the same line of work.
The designer chose the Donald M. Kendall Sculpture Gardens at PepsiCo headquarters as the setting of her lookbook, and her dresses hold their own against works by the likes of Alexander Calder and Jean DuBuffet. Hoffman continued to use her size-inclusive popcorn dresses as color-blocked canvases; there are new solid color ones with scooped out backs for fall. A selection of knit dresses, some with portrait backs, and one that outlines the bust like two leaves of three-leaf clover, leave room for the wearer’s face to be the central focus.
Hoffman said that the organic denim pieces (there were just three, so not a critical mass) were the closest to her own style. Most people will relate to the designer’s luxe polo sweater as a must-have autumn staple, but the heftiness of printed padded robe coats muddled the message about effortless comfort. The stars of the show were crisply tailored, yet easy pants suits of recycled cotton—one sage-colored, the other saffron hued—that might even convince “Big Mama,” who is in her birthday suit, to get dressed.
What isn’t visible to the eye, but is a draw to customers, is all the effort Hoffman puts into responsible design. While recognizing that it’s impossible to be entirely sustainable, Hoffman believes that there will never “be a point on this planet that the role of the artist, the innovator, the designer, the creative, isn’t essential to our evolution.” And she has hope in the innovators coming up. “I think for a long time, we weren’t [as designers] tasked with solutions, we were just given free reign on ego, and now designers have a whole different responsibility. Students have to problem solve, they don’t just get to express their inner parts, like, ‘this is what I think is beautiful.’ ” Hoffman is a bridge between the old way of doing things and the new. “I’m happy being an alternative for the time being,” Hoffman says. “It’s a big part of what brings customers to us and why they’re paying our price points. People care.”
