Personal style. It s something the fashion industry likes to blather on about quite a bit, yet it s more elusive than ever. It is hard to know what you do like when there are so many visuals cueing to what you should like. For Resort, Edun s Danielle Sherman looked to three separate entities that authentically communicate true personal style: the teddy boys of London, the brightly suited sapeurs of sub-Saharan Africa as depicted in the 2009 book Gentlemen of Bacongo, and Coco Chanel in the 1920s. "They seem so different," Sherman said at a showroom preview. "But each one influenced a movement."
Different or not, the designer managed to nicely filter it all through her own lens. (Her vision often encompasses taking masculine ideas and silhouettes and making sense of them on a woman.) The double-breasted, peak-lapel blazer in electric pink—an homage to the sapeurs—was elongated but cut narrow enough to the body not to look like the wearer was swimming in it. In a nod to the teddy boys, Sherman used D-rings on tie-waist trousers and to decorate the sleeve of a classic cable-knit sweater. The collection s top shoe was its mannish monk-strap oxford, which worked well with the tapered-leg pants.
The piece of the season, though, was a clever ode to Coco: a high-waist, mid-calf skirt that was pleated from the knee down. Sherman engineered the narrow proportions just right so that it worked as well with a waist-length top that accentuated the midsection as it did peeking out from under a boyish blazer. A drop-waist jumpsuit—the first all-in-one Sherman has ever designed for Edun—might end up being the collection s best-seller, but the skirt was the thing to give a woman s closet real personality.
