Fashion today is influenced not only by ’90s nostalgia but, as the docuseries Kingdom of Dreams reminds us, by corporate structures put in place at the end of that decade. In 1997, for example, Marc Jacobs was tapped to develop a ready-to-wear collection for Louis Vuitton, one of the oldest and the most storied leathergoods houses in the world.
Many accessories companies followed suit. In 2003 Kate and Andy Spade asked AsFour to create a capsule clothing collection. Now the company offers a wide range of products across many categories and recently appointed design directors Tom Mora and Jennifer Lyu who are faced with the challenge of applying the brand’s distinctive cheery quirkiness to all of them.
So far the results have been mixed—but not for lack of care or trying. There are several issues at hand. One is that translating Kate Spade’s signature eccentricity into clothing usually leads to prints. That combined with the brand’s long-established lady-like aesthetic and you start moving into Emilio Pucci/Lilly Pulitzer/Palm Beach territory, which Kate Spade doesn’t “own.” Separately, in this pre-fall collection there were references to other brands, which read like “lite” versions of the originals, and not what a customer comes to Kate Spade for.
The most convincing and fresh designs (mostly accessories) were those for which Mora and Lyu doubled-down on Spadeisms. As the company will turn 30 next year, the design directors went back to artist Alexander Girard’s estate, with whom Kate and Andy Spade had once collaborated, for a 2023 remix. An intarsia sweater shining with a Girard sun was a novel Instagram-friendly statement piece. Ditto the dimensional lemon pullover, and the lucky eye beaded T-shirt paired with striped railroad jeans. The reasons for falling in love with an ingenious wicker and rattan lemon-slice bag are many; they are also, aside from a desire to match head-to-toe, probably totally different for falling for a fruit-print dress. “Quirk” doesn’t translate the same way cross-category.
I came away from previewing this beach-inspired collection with hope for the future though. Mora and Lyu really have a sense of charming details, that extends from novelty bags, to the addition of pearlized shell-shaped buttons on a shirt, to pendant eye brooches. The really special pieces, the ones you couldn’t find anywhere else, were the collection’s “lemonade.”
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