Sarah Staudinger typically builds a whole story for each collection. Between fall 2022 and pre-fall 2022, the Staud girl jumped from Southern Italy to St. Tropez for a raging disco and a vacation from that vacation, respectively. Hearing Staudinger set the scene, the clothes feel like costumes in a movie. Usually. For resort 2023, she started small, with what she describes as an “obsessive reaction” to spirals.
“I had to force myself to explain why I felt like it was such an impactful symbol,” Staudinger says of her first design team meetings. “There’s no hard stop, and I was really inspired by the organic movement and this ancient but timeless shape. I dug deeper into what it can evoke. It exudes this relaxed energy and natural elegance.”
Because resort bridges the gap between winter and spring, there was plenty for Staud to riff on. The collection opens with a white dress with a gold spiral at the center, and there’s a handful of literal spiral prints. But the clothes that interpret how Staudinger feels about the spiral are more interesting than those that use the actual shape. Plissé garments get that “relaxed energy and natural elegance,” and many of the bags (a key item for Staud) are unstructured and soft-looking.
The sleekest looks are the most compelling. Western influences appear throughout the collection, but they tend to disrupt the serenity of the spiral theme; cowboy boots and jeans are famously stiff. One of the best outfits is the second in the lookbook, featuring a convertible, one sleeved navy tunic dress over wide-leg trousers. It’s elegant, and you could imagine people of many different ages wearing it. (Side note: Staudinger is laser focused on versatility, slightly surprising for someone whose designs are so omnipresent in snapshots online). The collection ends with a series of evening dresses. The most ambitious is a black gown that is Staudinger’s imagination of a spiral as a dress, if you were taking a birds-eye view of the wearer. The finale is a clean white Grecian gown with cutouts at the ribs and a long, thin cape. Athena as an Instagram model.
