“For the collection, it felt like Kaia gave license to the brand to expand,” Kahn adds. “Re/Done was originally T-shirts and jeans, of course—this casual, undone, California lifestyle brand. But at the same time, I’m from New York, and Kaia has spent time living in New York, and has that New York sensibility, that sophistication. Having Kaia as part of [the brand] became this invitation to create a little bit more of that sophisticated, metropolitan spirit in the collection.”
Added to that style profile was “French librarian circa 1969” and a sprinkle of the eternal muse of undone mystique, Jane Birkin. All this translates into bohemian tie-front blouses, slightly cropped polos, a silky babydoll dress with ruching across the bust, pinstriped blazers, and outerwear styles that include a leather trench, vintage-looking shearling, and an officer’s coat in khaki. Both Kahn and Gerber say that in creating the collection, they weren’t focused solely on how it looked, but also how it felt on the body—so much of the magic came during the fitting process.
Asked for favorite looks, Gerber notes the jeans named in her honor, of course—a slim-straight cut—and the Walker dress, a fine-gauge knit mini in crimson with long sleeves and a large cut-out at the back. Kahn, meanwhile, sought to recreate a comically oversized workwear-style jacket that she’s long loved, and thus the Worken jacket was born, with its slouchy silhouette crafted from a patinated, faded canvas. That both those pieces—the flirty dress, the masculine jacket—can exist in one collection goes back to the lodestar of Birkin, who could smash two oppositional things together and somehow make them work. Indeed, the pair imagined the collection as one that could work from day to night and fit into the closets of a variety of women, from femmes to tomboys. For what it’s worth, this editor found the cheeky slogan tees (one reads “Plot Twist”) particularly fetching.
The collection comes to life in the first campaign, photographed by Bella Newman, with creative direction by Jen Brill and styling by Taylor McNeil. It sees Gerber as a librarian, reading alone in her city apartment, with a dusky cityscape in the background. “It’s so refreshing, as a woman, to be sexy on your own terms and in a way that you genuinely find sexy—rather than other people telling you that you look sexy or you’re doing something that’s sexy,” Gerber says. “It was just such a wonderful space we got to play in, because it was a very safe space and on our own terms.”
Photo: Bella Newman
