“Yes, I grew up in Berkley, I’m a hippie at heart,” Raquel Allegra says, by way of justifying the inspiration for her spring collection. Zooming in from her studio in California, she asks, “I don’t know if anyone in the room there has had an experience that has shifted their mind, and shifted the way they look at the world through having a relationship with ancient plants.” The world of psychedelics and mycelium is certainly having a moment—it’s been referenced at Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen in recent seasons—but Allegra’s take was uniquely her own. Specifically, she was thinking about beauty, “What’s the lens through which we perceive what we’re looking at?” For this collection, the lens is “love, color, and comfort.”
The color and comfort part have always been key principles in Raquel Allegra’s collections, and most of it felt familiar: dip dye dresses in shades of pink and yellow like a sunset, or blues like the inside of a wave, patchworked sweaters with “overlapping globes of color,” and raw edges. A caftan in Allegra’s signature tie-dye, in shades of yellow and mustard, was a youthful take on the trend with its kangaroo pocket and contrasting fabric. She also brought back the technique of creating prints on embossed fabrics, as in the shirtdress with swirls of greens and blues and reds, like watercolors dissipating in a cup of water, overlaid over a jacquard pattern that resembled earth formations, worn like a robe over a matching T-shirt and leggings.
The watercolor motif was also present on a splatter-print suit whose print was actually Raquel Allegra’s name blown up into oversized proportions. “I’ve always struggled with the idea of wearing a logo,” she says. “To me, it needed to mean something. A name can mean something, obviously, but also it felt important to say something more than just the name or initials. I scrawled my name in really big writing, and then I dipped my hands in the ink, and I had this really fun afternoon of exploration with ink on the fabric. That was a way that I felt comfortable putting a logo on our garment.” She also created a monogram out of her initials, an R and an A, whose shape resembles a snake eating its own tail (“it represents the continued flow of the life cycle”), that showed up on the sleeve of a striped shirt that was dip dyed in black, worn with matching trousers and a tie (also embroidered with her monogram). They seemed a little out of place in a collection full of breezy, color-drenched dresses and skirts, but it made sense to the designer.
“What’s really important to me about the way we put the collection together is that it not just be one thing: you know, we’re dynamic,” she says. “To me [the model in that look is] a rock star. When I go to shows and I see someone on the stage that is expressing themselves, like pure creativity, to me that is also godly.” She adds, “There’s godliness to being in your specific purpose.” And Raquel Allegra would be the first one to tell you, she’s found hers.
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