It’s back to basics at The Elder Statesman—the caveat being that basics at the Los Angeles-based label are anything but. “[Resort] is holiday, so we tapped into a lot of our heritage, traditional kind of motifs,” Bailey Hunter, the brand’s creative director, said. “Florals, tie-dyes, stripes—all the things that we’re known for—we reinvented them in a way; and we’ve used a lot of new woven materials that we’ve brought into our library.”
Materials—and yarn, especially—are king at Elder Statesmen. Walking through the SoHo showroom feels like a visit to the Please Touch museum. “This is a hand-knit cotton with crochet flowers that are appliqued on,” Hunter said, showing off a brown sweater embellished with a handful of flowers. It was hanging next to a series of cream and tan plaid pieces, “hand-woven cashmere that we do every season, made in Central America on backstrap looms,” she explained. A matching jacket and high waist trousers in a proprietary “100% cashmere castle stripe,” a “reverse Fair Isle” sweater and matching little shorts, a floral wrap coat and zip-up jacket made from felted cashmere wool—you wanted to put your hands on all of it.
The yellow suit that opened the lookbook is a cashmere-cotton-wool twill made in Italy that feels like the softest and lightest denim. Another suit—they call it “relaxed tailoring”—is made from Italian 50/50 cashmere and wool and comes in three colors: rose hip, dark green, and bark, in both men’s and women’s styles. A highlight of the collection was certainly the wool donegal made on a vintage loom in Italy in colorblocked squares of gray, navy, and wine. In the lookbook it appears as a wrap skirt secured with an oversized safety-pin and styled with a cashmere hand-painted crewneck sweater. Together, they’re youthfully punky and quite timeless.
A collaboration with Uggs, another SoCal brand, is The Elder Statesman’s first foray into footwear. The clogs, mules, and boots made from patchworked sheepskin and decorated with “darning”-style embroidery are sure to become must-haves when they’re released later this year.
A sporty tank and mini skirt made from hand-knit alpaca and cotton in various shades of blue, a wave patterned knitted cashmere shirt and pants, and a pair of knitted striped cargo pants in mixed bouclé yarns were more proof that the knitwear experimentation here is unparallelled. The bouclé cargos were worn with a black sweater featuring an intarsia illustration of eyes and the phrase “eye to eye it lasts,” a design that came from Chait’s grandmother Thelma. Chait said, “I feel like [the phrase] is about the collection.” Hunter finished the thought: “It’s about how it’s a lot better to see things in person, and see how everything feels.”
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