Amy Smilovic, like many designers this season, was thinking a lot about the past, particularly after reading Thomas Wolfe’s classic novel, “You Can’t Go Home Again.”
“The whole idea is when you go back home, you’re a different person but everything’s the same. We started thinking about that in terms of the clothing,” Smilovic explained. It got her and Traci Bui-Amar, senior vice president of design, thinking about their three most formative eras.
“It was the ‘80s in that Madonna type, Wham spirit. Then it was the ‘90s — straight up Carolyn Bessette [Kennedy], and then the yuppie era. Even though we weren’t like part of it, it was going to college and how you would become Melanie Griffith in ‘Working Girl,’” she said.
To bring these moments of time to life, they took a trip down to Savannah, Ga., ahead of New York Fashion Week to shoot her fall film and culminating runway show, which will debut in July at SCAD.
Her fashions touched on the references subtly, as seen through timely, all grey “Carolyn Bessette moments” à la an easy crewneck dress and pencil skirt with extended, cascading side panel, or “Working Girl” strong-shouldered check suiting. However, fall mostly played into Smilovic’s ethos of reworking the well-known for now with light blazers that doubled as blouses; drop crotch pants, cut in a sportif track knit or into a skirt-meets-pant silhouette, and plaid shirting, designed as lightweight little halter tops, as breezy blouses or textural, slightly heavier shackets, to name a few.
The collection encompassed fall, a winter capsule (featuring great sporty nylon skirts with horsehair structured ruffles) and the core offering. Smilovic’s keen eye for pragmatic yet playful details shined through it all from head to toe, right down to her sharp-toed slingback pumps with adjustable lingerie straps.