Starr Hout and Laura Cramer were only half-joking when they said they designed their resort 2022 prints to hide stains. The compact florals and muted ginghams on the smocked dresses, caftans, and drawstring shorts would, in fact, camouflage a coffee drip, a spilled kid’s snack, or any number of inadvertent spots or marks. Hout and Cramer aren’t in the business of head-to-toe ivory silks and fussy, dry-clean-only “day dresses”; they need clothes that work as hard as they do, without sacrificing femininity or softness.
Resort’s palette of creams, browns, and taupes against rich emerald and cerulean translated the feeling they’re after at the moment: free, calm, untethered. In their packet of inspiration notes and photos, they used the words earthy, grounding, and soulful. As always, their focus was less on reinventing the wheel and increasingly on making pieces that nail a tricky balance: easy to wear, yet interesting, with both keep-forever longevity and can’t-wait-to-wear-it-now details.
The smocked-waist dresses—which hugged curves more than your typical Apiece Apart frock—hit the mark, ditto the utility jackets with oversized pockets and matching trousers. Other looks resonated simply for their canny color mixes: a seafoam sweatshirt with chocolate twill pants, or an emerald T-shirt with cornflower pants. They subtly communicated Hout and Cramer’s own obsession with styling: How many ways can you make a pant feel exciting? Right now, their answer is with color-blocking and tonal dressing, a happily simple approach during a frenetic time of year.
