Lafayette 148 is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. “We thought we would turn the lens to celebrating 30 years of dressing New York women,” said Emily Smith at the brand’s presentation in an airy Chelsea space. “Obviously we’ve gone more global since then.” She and her team had recently worked on a special collaboration with The Morning Show. “It was really fun to work on that project, working on characters and character building, so we kind of approached this collection the same way,” Smith said.
At the presentation, mannequins were outfitted with all kinds of New York-centric accessories—yellow Metrocards peeking out from crisp shirt pockets, classic “Thank You Have A Nice Day” coffee cups, and smiley face plastic bags done up in organza. The characters were each identified in quippy archetypes that adorned the foot of each mannequin, in a New Yorker-inspired typeface. There was “The Madison Avenue Matriarch” wearing a silk blouse and matching pleated skirt printed with illustrations of different iconic Manhattan locations, or “The Style Authority” in a white cotton poplin tunic, black skirt, and a leopard print cotton trenchcoat with a sateen finish (“For us leopard print is very neutral for New York”). It would’ve been nice to see that touch of humor and idiosyncrasy reflected more in the lookbook that accompanied the collection.
The clothes, meanwhile, were quintessentially Lafayette 148, although there was a more pared back approach this season. Instead of bold textures or fabric treatments, there seemed to be an emphasis on lightness, like a pink suit in tropical wool that let light through like a cotton poplin (“The Starchitect”, or the flirty black crochet dress woven with an organza ribbon left to create a layered frayed hem at the bottom (“The Guestlist Gatekeeper”). A simple dress with a built-in wrapped top appeared to be three separate pieces (“The Downtown Darling’). A button down shirt with extra-long front panels with button details could be draped, wrapped around, or left half-open to customize the fit. Worn by “The Diamond Status,” “The Editor-At-Large,” and “The Avant Garde,” they seemed poised to take the brand through the next 30 years. “For me the fact that you can take one piece and put it on three different people in three different ways is the beauty of it,” Smith said. “I really wanted to celebrate that.”
