In Silvia Plath’s The Bell Jar, the author’s only novel and presumed roman à clef about her own experiences, the protagonist Esther Greenwood becomes an intern at a women’s magazine in New York. One night, after a harrowing experience with a violent man, Greenwood returns to her accommodations and impulsively disposes of all of her clothing by throwing it from the roof. A rebellious reaction against the role her apparel played in the way she’s perceived and expected to carry herself—for men, for other women, for society.
Colleen Allen’s spring collection unfolded as if the designer had picked up those pieces, determined to reimagine them. “I’ve always collected antique lingerie as beautiful objects, things that have the hand-finished materiality that I love,” Allen said. “Putting those sorts of pieces all in front of me, I started thinking about the idea that women used to have these really expansive domestic wardrobes that would never be seen outside the house.” Dressing gowns, housecoats, slip dresses. “I was thinking about the way that I think culture is romancing women being home,” she continued, alluding to the insidious conservatism behind online trends like ‘trad wife.’ “I think my way of subverting that is to take these pieces and remove them from that domestic context, and in that way, take away that power.”
To listen to Allen talk about her clothes is to witness an astute observer: of culture, of womanhood, of her own lived experience at the intersection of both. This season Allen, whose clothes are never prim nor quite gratuitously sensual, got closer to the body, in her words, and by doing so fashioned a fresh, delicate balance between both. She made cocooning coats in shimmering fabrics and cut wispy, light-as-a-feather blouses and dresses in diaphanous silks. So confident and decisive is her hand that these, particularly a black dress decorated with disheveled ruffles and a floor-length gown with a keyhole neckline, which could feel flimsy and dismissed as too simple, came across as sophisticated and elegant. As complete sentences rather than passing thoughts.
With the specificity and idiosyncrasy of her clothes now established, four seasons in—Victorian-style jackets paired with matching pedal-pushers and lingerie slips presented as cocktail dresses and girdle-like shorts and tiny little brassiere tops—Allen seems confident in displaying her commercial acumen. Enter a fantastic backless knit gown that so delicately and flatteringly hangs from the shoulders, no sleeves required. She made a few more fantastic knit separates, which hung in her showroom but did not make the cut for this lookbook, and more clearly outlined who it is she’s making clothes for. With that spirit in mind, here’s a challenge for Allen: Up to this point her work feels mostly imagined, or at least presented, with one body type in mind. How would these clothes wrap around bodies that would undoubtably fill their intentional negative spaces? It may be time to find out.
Allen spoke of her colors this season—“bright marigold,” “ultraviolet,” “baby peach”—once again as determining factors in her design. “I wanted something esoteric and powerful that transformed these things that might not otherwise have that power,” she said of rendering some pieces, particularly those fantastic dresses, in hues that give them gravitas and body. Allen, unlike Greenwond (or Plath), does not live in the context of the ’50s, even if the state of this country’s politics are more there than here. It’s why Allen is ready—eager, even—to rebel. “This was about the poetry and romance—and the challenge—of being a woman; one who has that expectation of being at home and being all these things,” she said. May she continue her defiance with the forceful, confident irreverence of, in her own words, “a little butt reveal” in an otherwise perfectly polished lace skirt.
