Marissa Webb doesn t tend to spend time conjuring inspiration from far-flung sources. Instead, she aims for a steady evolution. "It s all built around the philosophy of soft and hard, masculine and feminine," said the designer at her Greenwich Village studio, where she was shooting her Pre-Fall lookbook. (Webb also served as the collection s de facto stylist, fiddling with trouser cuffs and shirt hems in between takes.) This season, she worked with a mix of textures, including a nubby wool tweed, a woven silk jacquard, and a weighty silk blend with a heavy sheen. Those fabrics were fashioned into pintucked-bib tunics with ties hanging loosely in the front, a softly shaped striped blazer wrapped up almost like a kimono, and a long cargo-pocket vest with an exaggerated stand-up collar. There were some things in the collection that came off as feeling not so fresh—a flippy miniskirt, for instance. Webb s vision is certainly clearest when she bucks the trends. Cutouts on a tweed blazer s hemline or the pitched seams of a blouse that curved just so offered unexpected twists to traditional silhouettes.
