Charlie Constantino isn’t the first designer to describe this season as something clean. An opportunity to reframe, or even reset, your behavior. For this, he called it a “narrative shift through the lens of character building” in a preview. It was replaced by a new focus on the fundamentals of dressmaking.
Her musings this season were vernacular vernacular, though perhaps not the kind you’d expect from a designer acclaimed for her handmade gorp-inflected style. “We were looking at a lot of military uniforms from the 18th and 19th centuries,” he said, “revisiting dress codes from the likes of Lord Nelson and Napoleon through a modern lens.”
From the beginning there was a sense of military rigor and formal rigor. A stone gray mackintosh and a padded cover jacket, both with the asymmetrical fastening of a historic lieutenant’s jacket, came with jutting epaulettes and shoulder tabs. A hooded, zip-up sweater with storm flaps punched with purple appliqués, echoing the gilt frogging of decorations you might find on an admiral’s uniform.
“I’m really drawn to these romantic, almost dressy silhouettes and details,” said Constantino. “Although of course they are profoundly impractical in terms of function, so it was about turning it into something that was actually more wearable.” As expected from Constantinou, a diligent sense of handcraft made itself felt in the collection. The traditionally decorative pleating and braiding details were translated here as toggles that enabled a degree of modularity, allowing the seemingly rigid forms to be loosened.
While uniforms—and by extension sameness—were a key theme of the season, its implicit associations with faceless uniformity were countered by the designer’s signature approach to color. “It was a direct contrast,” he said of the collection’s textured cold-dyed palette of British redcoat scarlet, camo fatigue khaki and dip-dyed black to ice blue. “Even as we develop this collection, no dress will ever be the same,” she said. “It’s about evoking the sense of unity that uniforms provide, while also contradicting that.”
