Tome may be a new kid on the fashion block, but the brand s designers, Ryan Lobo and Ramon Martin, aren t exactly novices. Lobo is a well-known stylist back in the duo s native Australia, while Martin s previous gig was design director at Derek Lam. They ve been thinking about launching a label together for the past fifteen years. All that experience shows: This collection was marked by the confidence and clarity of its point of view. Inspired by Georgia O Keeffe, Lobo and Martin turned out a number of pieces that hewed to the monastic look of O Keeffe s own wardrobe and used a fair amount of felted wool, suede, and shearling suggestive of desert tones and textures. In general, the reference was kept light. But Lobo and Martin got something important from O Keeffe, which was the collection s monumentality—a muted gold gown, for instance, was emphatically spare but got a lot of power from its graceful, fluid volume. Likewise, a sharp coat in felted wool was a standout, thanks to its vast, sculptural lapels. Not everything here was quite so operatic—you could cherry-pick more than a few accessible, understated pieces from the collection. But even garments like a pair of slim, striped trousers, or a tunic-length white shirt, reflected the emphatically unfussy vibe of the whole. That s a sign of maturity in designers. Lobo and Martin did well to bide their time.
