Vogue
After his Spring show in Paris, Joseph Altuzarra and his husband took a short holiday in Morocco. His new Pre-Fall outing nods to North Africa, but it’s less a literal ode to Marrakech than it is what Altuzarra described as his effort to evoke the “empowering” experience of travel. “The energy of seeing something new, and the idea of independence—that you can go anywhere—was something I was into,” he says.
The task for Altuzarra this season, then, was incorporating that sense of boundary-less expansiveness into his urbane, polished aesthetic. Arguably, the look that captured it best was the first (pictured here): a Carhartt-ian field jacket worn with a softly draped white blouse and fairly swashbuckling black leather pants tucked into knee-high boots. The high waist and fuller legs of those leather pants, which he also showed in electric blue, felt fresh and directional.
Sharp tailoring and sexy dresses with a bohemian spirit are the two pillars of the designer’s label. Rounding out the first category were pantsuits and topcoats in a natty black-and-white checked wool. He also used the material for an ’80s-ish miniskirt, another novel silhouette for the brand and one that’s performing well, Altuzarra said. On the boho dress front, there was a tiered slip dress in a Lurex striped fabric developed in-house, a plunge-front number in metallic lamé, and ruffled off-the-shoulder floral-print styles—lots of variety. The retail success of the espadrille “soled” tote Altuzarra launched for Resort spawned a new shape here: a smaller bucket bag.