This is the fourth collection from London-based designer Edeline Lee. But she s certainly no novice: Prior to launching her line, the Central Saint Martins grad worked with Zac Posen, in that brand s early days, and then she headed up the design for the buzzy label Rodnik. Those are two very different kinds of experiences, but you can see from Lee s clothes how she would have made it work; as this collection affirmed, her aesthetic mixes refined construction and an idiosyncratic sensibility.
For Fall, Lee riffed on some truly rich source material: vintage regalia from a Texas Odd Fellows union that got her thinking about secret societies and the way clothes can communicate in code. There was an overarching quirkiness here, as she emphasized oversize sailor-suit collars, military frogging, and motifs with a vaguely Illuminati feel, which she executed in a purposefully naive way. To her credit, the clothes didn t look silly; trim pants in mottled gold and copper tweed, with a band of black down each leg, had a graphic kick but were indisputably realistic, and a soft pleated dress in turquoise, white, and black silk was an elegant extrapolation of the collection s color-blocking. Elsewhere, all her pencil-slim sheaths were winners, and a gray frogged coat averted kitsch, and looked sharp. Everything had a real sense of polish. The one quibble here, really, was that Lee s sailor dresses sometimes erred on the side of the twee. You got the sense from this collection that Lee has found her voice, but she s still in the process of modulating it.
