Women come to Raquel Allegra for the tie-dye, but they stay for the thoughtful, painstaking attention to detail. She’s a designer who cares as deeply about the subtle fade of sage to emerald on a dip-dyed cashmere sweater as she does the specific placement of a pocket, or the way an armhole feels against your skin. They’re qualities you can’t really appreciate via Zoom, and you can’t feel the “buttery” jerseys and micro-ribbed knits, either. Allegra doesn’t make clothes to be appreciated on a screen—at least not only on a screen. She dedicates time to those details and colors and tie-dye techniques because she wants the clothing to become a part of your life, a no-brainer you reach for in special and mundane moments alike.
It’s a distinctly female perspective, clothes “by women, for women”—never mind how overused that expression has become. Allegra married comfort and style long before the pandemic made it a business requirement, but even that feels like an oversimplification. Her clothes aren’t just comfortable and creative; Allegra and her team try on every single piece before deciding if it belongs in the collection, and they were particularly scrupulous in editing spring 2021. If none of the women could see themselves wearing a piece day in and day out, it was cut. The results are a smaller collection comprised of oversized T-shirts, easy dresses, silk robes, and elasticized trousers, items they deemed both critically essential and undeniably covetable. There’s a touch of the ’70s in the square-neck minidress and sun-faded pastel wrap dresses, plus a bit of a ’90s touch in the mesh layering tops under slipdresses. Soft as they may be, these aren’t just “house clothes.” Allegra styled them with knee-high boots or platform sandals.
While some competitors are playing it safe this season, Allegra went bold and audacious with her prints. One particularly esoteric motif requires zooming in: a chocolate brown silk printed with an illustration of a Greek goddess on a cliff, peering down at her lover in the lagoon. The scene is blown-up and repeated throughout the fabric—it’s best seen on a ruffled wrap dress—with water droplets falling around the edges. Allegra lifted it from a vintage men’s blouse she found in a thrift store; she liked its ancient, otherworldly depiction of romance. It’s the kind of print that could start a conversation—or maybe a new romance—even on Zoom.
