While Lafayette 148 creative director Emily Smith looked out of the brand’s headquarters window into the Brooklyn Navy Yard for spring inspiration, she traveled to Marfa, Texas, over the summer as inspiration for her pre-fall lineup.
Smith said she originally went for the Judd Foundation — “every artist’s mecca dream to go there,” she said. But what really blew her away was the “landscape, the nature, vastness of the landscape, the architecture and the desolation of it — it’s everything,” she said, titling the collection “Seeing Marfa.”
“We created this palette that really spoke to all of those things. Anywhere from the texture of the cacti to like the dryness of the brush to the crinkling of the concrete — that kind of dilapidated feeling,” she said, pointing out intriguing, artisanal cacti-bud-reminiscent, clipped-and-cut jacquard layers in gravel-hued linen (the pencil skirt looked great with a classic black cashmere T-shirt), or garments that looked like heat-cracked concrete (crafted from pleating and matting a pewter fabric with a strong metallic finish). A cotton trench with mixed metal threads continued the idea and allowed the wearer to crinkle the fabric into new, distressed (but still very polished) shapes.
She even brought back twigs from Marfa and worked with an artist to create their own Cyanotype prints — a camera-less technique that utilizes the sun to cash shadow-like prints of the layered objects on coated paper. The result was both timeless and new for the brand, and looked great in each silhouette: a statement trenchcoat, pleated pant and short-sleeve button-up.
Leaning into the femininity of light, shadows and space, as well as the ethos of minimalist art, Smith peppered in clean, linear lines. For instance, vertically ribbed knit dresses and separates; a white mesh-knit sheer cotton dress; oversize shirt dressing with thin pinstripes; chic striped linen summer tailoring in shades of concrete, and a simple, sleek new pair of high-waist black barrel leg trousers. To round it all out, Smith mixed black leather and linen in minimalist fashion to craft a shirt and midi skirt set.
In addition to the ready-to-wear, collection notes signified an upcoming collaboration between Lafayette 148, Smith and Brooklyn-based artist and photographer Martien Martin. In May, the brand’s boutique windows will feature a selection of 20 original photographs, captured by Martin, of Marfa.
