Vegetables, cell phones, calculators, horses, a street cart cup of coffee, bowtie pasta, prize ribbons, caviar. These are all the things that play a starring role in Rachel Antonoff’s fall collection, where the designer continued to explore the idiosyncratic world she’s built with her namesake label. And yet, among the easy printed dresses and intarsia knit pullovers and cardigans, Antonoff was looking to break new ground. “I’m particularly excited, because I feel like for a really long time we’ve been told it’s got to be super specific: People don’t want solids from us, they only want prints,” she explained during a recent Zoom meeting. “But people seem to be really liking this, and I’m very excited that we can not only do a solid, but we can do a black solid.”
The black solid in question is a knit set made up of a cardigan and a wrap-skort with a petal-edge trim in contrasting white. But elsewhere there was also a black dress with a multi-ruffle detail at the shoulders—each ruffle trimmed in gold—and a pink slip dress with spaghetti straps and an empire waist. Okay, so that last dress did feature a print of a Champagne tower on the front, with teeny pearl embroidery standing in for the bubbles of fizz, but it was subtle enough that it basically counted as a solid—at least in Antonoff’s world.
For fall, she also expanded her categories, offering a puffer coat in an artichoke and squash blossom print (calling all the girlies who were excited about tomato girl summer!), and a toile de jouy print of characters from The Sopranos. The puffer also comes in a bright metallic pink. “This is our first time experimenting with a solid because people really like the printed puffers,” Antonoff said, “but I feel like if we’re going to do a solid, then let’s make it shiny.”