There’s a feeling of hesitant expectancy running through the fall season so far as designers and their clients dream—in between Zoom sessions and Netflix binges—of a life after Covid. There are options for the current housebound reality and existence beyond it in Jonathan Simkhai’s fall collection, in which he plays the softness of knits against more substantial materials like vegan leather and suede. Working with Brooklyn-based Third Crown, the designer also developed jewelry and hardware that builds upon that hard/soft dichotomy. The most dramatic example is a lovely draped white knit dress with a circular cut-out with a gold ornament spanning its diameter (à la Halston after Gucci).
Longing for connection, Simkhai also partnered with a family-owned knitwear company in Peru who created some of the collection’s coziest pieces. Always partial to fringe, the designer used it on sweaters, scarves, and a cleverly designed camel coat with fringed selvedge edges with an ‘If you can’t go to Aspen, let Aspen come to you’ sort of feeling.
Using lingerie details and cutouts is a Simkhai signature. A long white cashmere dress with underbra is an excellent example of this peek-a-boo play. This season the small skin reveals feel like the first peek of a crocus or other harbingers of a new beginning. That lightness is also communicated through crochet and lace. The hero piece of this collection is undoubtedly the hand-crocheted trench, a skillful, romantic, and tactile update to the original. Complementing the openwork of the crochet is a custom Guipure designed by Simkhai and used alone or inset into other fabrics. This textile, he says, was inspired by a Tseng Kwong Chi photograph of Keith Haring’s Into 84 body painting. There are many ways that artwork could be interpreted, but few readings could be as personal as that of Simkhai. The grandson of an owner of a lace mill in Iran, he saw in Haring’s bold graphic lines something fragile, web-like, and interconnected.
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