An oasis of calm. That was my immediate reaction upon seeing Nehera’s resort collection, which is executed in shades of white. Modest was the second. For some, the roominess of these clothes will provide a refuge from the trend of dressing up and letting go for “hot girl” summer dressing.
To be clear, company owner Ladislav Zdút and his team weren’t reacting to “sexy” dressing, they were just doing their thing. The Nehera woman is better described as cosmopolitan than as a coquette. For resort they found inspiration in Sara Berman (a Jewish émigré to New York, via Belarus and Palestine, and mother of the artist Maira Kalman), and her pale, exquisitely edited wardrobe, the subject of a 2017 exhibition at the Costume Institute. The folds you see in an ankle-grazing white shirtdress and some oversized tote bags are not, as they first seem, styling fails, but a nod to Berman’s neatly folded clothes.
A less literal and more intriguing Berman-inspired idea the team explored was that of an interchangeable wardrobe. It’s a concept with roots in the ’70s, when separates dressing really took off, that has come up a few times of late and ties in with the idea of making what you have, or what you acquire, work harder for you.
Nehera’s double-breasted coat, longer balmacaan, and pantsuits, all rendered in neutral linen, were among the collection’s keepers. The away-from-the-body silhouette worked best with tailoring and heavier fabrics. Some of the softer pieces fell flat. Novelty entered in the form of a puff-sleeve dress in a subtle stripe; the team experimented with a sustainable leather-like fabric, derived from cacti.
The pandemic might have temporarily dried up retail in some areas, but Nehera opened a shop-cum-oasis during the crisis. It’s located in Vienna, long a cultural crossroads, not far from the company’s headquarters in Bratislava, Slovakia.
