If you’re the kind to roll out of bed and throw on the first things that come to hand, you’d do well to look at Auralee’s fall collection, where designer Ryota Iwai started with doing exactly that as a premise.
“The idea was having a really warm, cozy time at home and then needing to leave the house — but in an elegant way,” said the Tokyo-based designer through a translator.
For Iwai’s homebodies, having to leave the comfort of their homes doesn’t mean getting gussied up in anything complicated, either. His was a straightforward fare of hooded coats, button-down shirts, crew-neck sweaters and blazers, offered in delicate winter neutrals with the occasional vibrant orange or jade green.
Congruent with his idea of a rushed morning, buttoning was done wrong, shirts were used as wraparound skirts and the occasional too-casual look was dressed up by a handsome tailored coat.
He even offered a final exit that looked like an elevated take on the lockdown-driven blanket challenge, turning a down comforter, a long-sleeved polo shirt and a belt into a chic proposition.
Throughout, textures developed in-house nodded to home textiles and imparted the idea of lived-in, oft-used looks, from wrinkled silk made to resemble slept-in bedsheets to the kind of piling that appears on thick-weave wools after repeated use.
Elsewhere, a subtle sheen on a sage green puffer looked part surface treatment, part fading from light exposure, with Iwai commenting that he was keen to see “people develop even more personality and character into [each] garment.”
At a moment where getting back into the world still feels a relative novelty, Iwai offered the idea that you can be tastefully disheveled, with the right coat — or a blanket and a belt.
