The arrival of a new baby, his third with his husband, kept Joseph Altuzarra off the New York Fashion Week calendar in September. Behind the scenes, though, everything moved according to schedule; the clothes in these photos were sold to buyers starting in May, and parts of the collection will arrive in stores next month. It was designed in the same spirit as his fall runway show, which marked a creative turning point, with its rejection of “total look” fashion and emphasis on individual style. At a showroom appointment he said a pine green cropped suede jacket and long cotton chino skirt, which together exemplify his new more irreverent and more pragmatic approach, were among the season’s best sellers with his wholesalers.
“The overarching thing we worked around this season was literature,” he explained. Altuzarra reads a lot of fiction and keeps up a staff book club; Remarkably Bright Creatures by Shelby Van Pelt and The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah are two recent reads. On the clothes, his love of books translated into papery textures, folding details, and prints, like the marbling motif that decorated a shirtdress, and body paintings à la Yves Klein that appeared on otherwise minimal sheaths. Other pieces were printed with fantastical images of creatures skimming over waves and mountaintops, the result of a cadavre exquis project the design studio took part in. And the exaggerated cotton eyelet that adorned the ruffled neckline of a slinky silk dress was inspired by paper crafts of the kind most of us will remember from making snowflakes in art class.
Swapping a sense of control for a sense of play can make for tricksy fashion, but Altuzarra kept his designs rooted in recognizable archetypes. The papery yarns, for instance, were used for aran sweaters, while floaty organza skirts with origami-like folding details were grounded by neat tailored jackets with the defined waists of the New Look. “We still wanted it to feel like it was a lot of different people,” Altuzarra said. He let his imagination fly on an evening dress with an “almost Renaissance hip construction” and eyelet ruffles at the shoulder line that evoke bird’s wings. A look—and a collection—with a lot of main character energy.