Adam Lippes has a lot to look forward to. A debut handbag collection launching in November. A new London store and three spaces in Japan, all opening in 2026. A first of its kind collaboration with a home appliance company. And possibly a new puppy? Gumball scampered around Lippes’s Fifth Avenue salon showroom like he owned the place.
His new spring collection will keep the brand momentum going, the boldness of his business plan seems to be reflected in how work. As with his resort offering, he used a December trip to Japan as a starting point, only here he turned up the dial. The vivid flower print and brocade of X and Y, a little cheeky by his standards, was inspired by the Shojo comic books read by young Japanese girls. The ballooning pants of last season, a riff on construction workers’ uniforms, were given the luxury treatment. In addition to chino cotton, he cut them in luxe evening silks and sheers. And peplums, modeled on kimono obis, were constructed to be removable from the slim skirts of different lengths they embellished.
Yet subtleties were just as essential to the story he was telling this season. The moire pattern of a brown silk satin scarf-neck blouse was rolled by an engraver, “the classic way.” If you spilled a drink, heaven forbid, the pattern “would just disappear,” Lippes said. The wood print of a shirt and full skirt modeled on the elaborate grain cultivated by Nakashima woodworkers, looked fairly mesmerizing—and will be cocktail party safe.
Also appealing is Lippes’s expanding denim offering. Though is launching a new collection of cowboy boots for his clientele in Texas and beyond (that’s another new project), don’t go expecting traditional five-pocket jeans. He treats his Japanese denim to special washes that render it almost unrecognizable in a shade of oyster gray, and cuts it like tailored suiting. A paperbag waist wiggle skirt with white buttons up the side is made in black double-face Japanese cotton twill from the “oldest denim house in the world”—a real showstopper.
