“I really wanted something light,” Hervé Leger’s Michel Ochs says of his new pre-fall collection, adding that he’s been looking for lightness lately. It’s a fast-paced and heavy world. Ox’s intuition was correct. Why wear clothes when everything else feels like it’s on your shoulders?
“It’s more of a feeling than an actual direct concept,” she explained. “I wanted to incorporate more wearability into the collection.” It started with a vintage Léger skirt she found in the archives. “It has elements of Georgette, and for a brand known for bodycon, I love that juxtaposition of fluidity.”
In addition to his famous stretch knits, a man named Leger could do a mean slip and drape wonderful flouncy silks. And that’s athleisure (and SKIMS, yoga pants, whatever). With this in mind, Ochs has turned its pre-fall range toward an area it hasn’t explored much: daywear. She made a simple dress with ruffles from Leger knits. Some are plain, while others have embellishments like funky metal buttons or subtle sheer elements. These sit at the lower end of Léger’s price range and seem designed to please the crowd rather than being a forward-looking proposition. Of course, you can easily imagine Taylor Swift wearing it strolling around Tribeca, or the many women commuting to New York City to work in the office.
Back to the Georgette skirt. Ochs flexed the muscles she used to design fan-favorite dresses at the now-defunct Cushnie et Ochs. Her interpretation of the skirt is the dress in the opening look of this slideshow. Bandaged knee-length frocks with empire waistlines and georgette skirts reflect the current fascination with shapewear, while offering a dressier, pared-back interpretation. I got the impression that it was simple yet very elegant.
