Despite tariffs being slapped onto her merchandise last year, the US, Magda Butrym’s largest market, was also her fastest growing. This week she opened her store on Mercer Street in SoHo. It’s a huge step, especially for a bootstrapped brand–and Butrym feels energized by the city. It’s still rare to make it as a woman designer, but less so in New York, where Tory Burch, Rachel Scott, Veronica Leoni, and plenty of other women hold court.
For the collection, she took cues from the work of the pioneering Polish artist Natalia LL, who came to New York from behind the Iron Curtain and picked at patriarchal views, consumerism, and communism. “She was fighting for women in art and came here and nothing was easy, and I feel the same sometimes,” said Butrym.
She explored lightness, which was exciting to see from a designer beloved for her leather jackets and structural, cinched-waist silhouettes.
A large portion of the collection was dedicated to reworking the apron, inspired by the romantic memory of her grandmother in the kitchen. Butrym piled translucent layers of silk atop each other in various combinations. The looks were at their best when paired with more contemporary touches. A midi-length, nude number worn beneath a translucent trench, with pockets full of roses, convincingly married a sense of airiness and self-possession as the model stomped down the runway: a mini version could find many use cases in a downtown wardrobe. The last look, styled with a 1960s ’do, polite tights and pearls, felt a little haunted. As Butrym negotiated between rigid tradition and modernity, it was fitting that Nara Smith, whose online performance of domestic labor ad absurdum has earned her a seat at the head table of trad wifery, despite her recent protestations, was in the front row.
There was plenty to satiate Butrym’s fanbase: a structured blazer with feathers bouncing at the neck, a cocktail dress with them at the bust, plus tights made with crochet-edged underwear. Sleeveless button-front dresses worn with slips underneath echoed the house dresses she put out for resort.
Butrym is still figuring out how to translate her knack for the high-octane into the everyday. Having an outpost in New York, which she said has made her think about wearability more deeply, will help her in that pursuit.
