There was a certain exuberance to Rentrayage’s collection this season. “This was the first collection I’ve designed in a long time where I was like, ‘Oh! We’ll actually get to wear this to somewhere’,” the designer Erin Beatty said over Zoom. “We know that people are gonna be wearing them out, and they’re wearing them out into this kind of whole new world.”
These joyful—and hopeful?—emotions translated to ruffles, lace details, and lots of menswear-inspired pieces, though she revealed that some of the key themes in the collection are “femininity” and the intangible area between “girlhood and maturity.” That tension could be seen in the princess-y blouses made from a mix of a floral print fabric (the shirred-detail bust) and black lace (the gathered sleeves and a-line bodice), which she paired with cropped, straight leg, dark blue wash jeans with an eyelet detail at the pockets and the hem; and it could also be seen in the windowpane plaid suit made from two contrasting fabrics, one black with a light gray pattern and another in shades of blue. Worn with nothing underneath, the suit had a laid-back, playful vibe, but it could still make for a handsome selection for the boardroom.
The menswear fabrics had a two-fold reason to be present, one is that Beatty is attracted to them, but the second is more practical. “Lots of the fabrics that we choose are just fabrics that are highly available or easy to find, and men’s suiting is something that we can always locate,” she explained. Similar is her use of men’s shirting, which showed up in ultra feminine dresses with ruffles and lace details. At Rentrayage, Beatty works exclusively with deadstock and upcycled materials, and last season was the first time she was able to go to Italy to source deadstock fabrics, which she considers “a game changer.” It was a group of mixed floral print dresses that captured her ideas for this season best: a tea dress in matching-but-mismatching cream and brown floral with black lace inset at the bottom, in particular. She showed it with and without an oversized (upcycled) denim jacket with anorak details.
Along with materials, season after season, Beatty returns to similar silhouettes and construction—always refining, always trying to make things “sharper”—and as a result, her clothes always look good with each other, no matter the season, as evidenced by the designer’s own look at the day of our appointment. Wearing a denim jacket “probably from our second or third collection,” along with a dress made from light blue striped men’s cotton shirting with lace at the bottom (“spring collection, currently on our website”), Beatty was her own best model.
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