admin During a visit with Nili Lotan to review her resort 2024 collection earlier this year, she opened the conversation with a bang: “Navy is the new black.” Her reasoning was that her woman doesn’t own many of the considerate basics she comes to Lotan for in the shade; she only owns them in black. For spring, she doubled down. The racks at her showroom were almost entirely devoid of black, bar two striking knit maxi dresses—a basic the Lotan devotee doesn’t have in black yet.
“I’m a very intuitive person,” the designer said. “The truth is that this is a combination of that with strategy from a business perspective.” That’s the Nili Lotan no-nonsense pragmatism that keeps the many women who outfit her lives with her wardrobing coming back each season.
Take her jacket proposals for spring: “I did so many blazers last spring that I was like ‘Okay, now everyone owns a blazer,’” she said with a smirk. Of the many jackets Lotan cut this season, not one of them is a standard blazer. There’s military outerwear, a fantastic bar jacket, and a run of parkas and coat length pieces.
Another example: Lotan is designing for the weather we are experiencing, not the seasons we theoretically have. “It’s time to adjust,” she said. “It’s still cold in February when spring delivers, she’s still dressing for winter.” And when spring ends before pre-fall hits stores, she’s already dressing for summer, and so Lotan worked high-summer ease into the tail-end delivery of her spring lineup. “That’s how I’m working with my DTC,” she explained. Lucky for her, and her customers, direct-to-consumer accounts for over 50% of her business. Not a bad place to be.
