admin Lafayette 148’s Emily Smith recently bought a place upstate and she’s been spending lots of time working on it—her legs, covered in little bits of paint underneath a pair of sheer black trousers, were testament to it. She’d already started thinking about the outdoors for Lafayette’s resort collection, but here she pushed it further—literally—by holding a presentation at the Jefferson Market Garden in the West Village. It was a marked change from the usual appointments at the label’s studio, showroom, or store, but Smith and her team still managed to find inspiration in their architectural surroundings. “We moved to the Navy Yard five years ago, and our design studio overlooks the Brooklyn Grange, so we thought: let’s make a collection about the idea of urban orchards and this idea of these oases within the city,” she said. The most obvious interpretation of the inspiration was on a tonal printed jacquard made of life-size plants and flowers created using a process called eco-printing, where you place flowers or plants on fabric and then steam the fabric, leaving their silhouette behind. “It’s kind of an old lady thing,” Smith said, laughing, “but we tried to do it in a much more wearable and modern way.” It was used on a casual burlap khaki suit with a wrap-style jacket tied at the waist, a matching sash and straight-legged trousers that slightly pooled at the ankles. The idea was also featured as a knitted jacquard on an easy T-shirt, maxi skirt, and scarf, all in shades of blue and white (“like the sky”), that were surprisingly lightweight. Their signature thinner-than-thin leather was back on a cropped short sleeve shirt and matching skirt with fringe detail, and an oversized sky blue shirt dress.
Aprons were another point of reference, used most elegantly in a white silk crepe de chine column gown with a softly draped organza overlay that was supposed to mirror “when you take an apron and quickly tie it in the back,” said Smith. With the rise of so-called “quiet luxury,” her brand has recently experienced an uptick in celebrity dressing; and looking around the garden at the various influencers that were posing and having their picture taken next to the mannequins in the lush surroundings, it was evident that Smith and her team are vying to take Lafayette148 to the next level. “We’ve been getting some buzz,” she said coyly. “We’ve been a bit of a hidden secret, and we’re ready for the world to get to know us a little better.”
