Lafayette centered its new collection on the idea of life drawing because, just like spring, it symbolizes the start of something new.
Fashion Weeks have no doubt become a platform for the industry’s biggest names to outdo each other in launching their new collections. This year’s New York Fashion Week, for one, has so far seen the likes of Tommy Hilfiger turning a ferry into a runway, Jason Wu installing a towering art installation at Hudson Yards, and Off-White transforming Pier 2 into a massive basketball court.
Amid the glitz and the glamour of NYFW, or fashion shows per se, luxury brand Lafayette 148 New York chose to get down to the basics — both for the theme of its spring 2025 ready-to-wear collection and its exhibition. Because, after all, less is also more.
Held at the 50 Ninth building in Manhattan yesterday, Sept. 10, Lafayette’s NYFW 2024 program was an immersive display of its new collection rather than a spectacle on the runway. The brand’s creative director and creator of its spring 2025 collection, Emily Smith, said that the exhibit is a reflection of the brand’s persona: sophisticated, clean, luxurious, and made with outstanding craftsmanship.
Most of all, the theme of the exhibit is interwoven with Lafayette’s concept for its new collection, which is life drawing. Titled “In the Drawing Studio,” Lafayette’s presentation gave guests the experience of stepping into a fashion designer’s studio and gallery room.
The collection was presented in a set of mannequins placed in rows of two across the room. Between the mannequins are hanging banners printed with sketches of the human body and charcoal smudges. To enhance the experience further, 50 Ninth’s second floor was illuminated by large-format projectors streaming video footage that emulated the feeling and sound of being in an artist’s workroom.
Smith gave a glimpse of the exhibit during her interview with The Glossy Podcast on Sept. 6. The designer said, “As an understated luxury brand, we keep it quite minimal. This is our second showing for CFDA (Council of Fashion Designers of America) runway. So we’re not doing a runway, we’re doing a presentation.”
Smith said the intention was to mirror the experience of being in an art biennale or a large international exhibition. She continued, “We wanted it to be almost an art biennale immersive experience. Viewers are coming in. It feels sort of an art gallery and they’re getting this moment of being with the beauty of the craftsmanship and the product.”
Another reason the luxury brand opted to launch an exhibition is that they want their visitors to feel that they can own the collection rather than seeing “one extreme piece and another extreme piece” showcased on the runway. Smith said, “All of our clothes need to be wearable. So you’ll see our collections in the stores completely.”
‘The beginning of any art form’
Lafayette centered its new collection on the idea of life drawing because, just like spring, it symbolizes the start of something new. “It is the beginning of any art form,” Smith said.
When it comes to fashion design, sketching is a way of communicating ideas in visual form. They could end up only as scribbles on the designer’s sketchbook or eventually as one of the most coveted pieces in a boutique. It’s an example of how something so simple can turn out to be profoundly significant. And this is also why Lafayette has since been committed to its ethos of understated luxury.
Since Lafayette was founded in 1996 by Deirdre Quinn, Shun Yen Siu, and Ida Siu in SoHo, New York, the luxury brand has been practicing an “effortless, minimalistic, aesthetical approach.”
Smith explained, “It’s a women-founded company; it’s women dressing women. We know the fuss of getting dressed in the morning, and what you want to do and don’t want to deal with. So it’s really just designing with that in mind and stripping away the excess.”
This minimalist yet luxurious approach is also what Smith used for Lafayette’s spring 2025 collection, which she said was six months in the making.
“It’s quite labor intensive,” the designer said. “The main reason is that we produce our fabrics on our own. We work with Italy for all of our fabrics. And I think that’s the beauty of it. A lot of our styling and shaping are simple or understated, but I think that’s important ‘cause they play with the luxuriousness of the fabrics.”
The collection consists of pieces for Lafayette’s market in their everyday lives: the “achieving woman” or “women who have something to contribute regardless of age.” This includes relaxed suits, flowy occasionwear, statement knits, and classic white shirt with a twist. All of which, Smith said, explore both the craftmanship and beauty that comes from capturing the human body in its purest forms.
Among the collection’s most notable pieces is a black maxi bodycon dress embellished with loosely hanging threads that were stitched after the form of pencil strokes.
Meanwhile, the concept of minimalism with a twist is found on a white dress shirt with smudged charcoal prints on the front and sleeves.
Among the ensembles embracing the beauty of the human form are these off-white and yellow mesh bodycon dresses designed with a knee-length shift dress underneath.
Another notable piece is this layered fringe dress that can be likened to shredded paper from an artist’s workroom.
According to Smith, Lafayette’s new collection comes with lightweight fabrics such as linens, silk, poplin cottons, sheen organza, and micro-fine, to suit spring’s warmer climes.
It has a palette comprising off-whites, grays, and blues to emulate the “charcoal shades, light pastel chalk hues, and the raw textured tones of drawing paper” associated with the art of life drawing.
Take a look at the rest of the collection below.
