Erin Beatty hosted Rentrayage’s fall presentation at a cafe in the West Village. The buzzy energy inside matched the collection, which leaned heavily on reworked denim, one of the brand’s great strengths. “We’ve gotten much more into denim,” Beatty said. “I love the idea of playing with something that’s quintessentially American, but taking it to another level. But also there’s a lot of old jeans out there you know…”
There’s also a lot of really wonderful deadstock wool suiting fabrics in Italy, and this season they came together beautifully with the denim. She spliced the legs off a pair of jeans to turn them into a high-waisted skirt, with added cotton ruffled insets, while a longer-length plaid tweed blazer had an appliqué of a patchworked denim bustier, its silhouette borrowed from a traditional women’s riding jacket. She also reworked a denim jacket, and pieced it together with a quilted glen plaid fabric. On the front, about an inch or two of the bottom part of the pockets hung out from underneath—a nod perhaps to that classic look of too-short jorts with the visible pocket lining. Except the vibe here was less hair metal and more Queen Elizabeth at Balmoral. (See the cotton trench coat collaged with one half of a tweedy blazer, or the glen plaid coat with a removable quilted black vest which was definitely one of the best pieces of the collection.) It had the sensibility of certain Japanese designers, but done in Beatty’s unique way.
Complementing the collection were casual separates in sturdy caramel cotton twill, and a beautiful black and yellow floral deadstock silk viscose which she mixed with a gray and black floral to create tiered ruffle dresses and skirts. “I don’t feel like I need to prove myself in a certain way anymore, but what I do want is to make clothes that people really want to wear,” Beatty explained. “High-fashion pieces and elegant dresses—things that you want to invest in, that you see and you’re like ‘I want to put that on my body.’”
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