For Tibi’s spring collection, Amy Smilovic and her team were looking to push themselves and “be reckless.” Their clothes are unlikely to ever read that way, but what Smilovic was referring to was the fact that anything goes during her creative process. “We are grounded but at the same time we want to see how far we can push things and still feel like ourselves,” she said.
Suiting played a starring role in the collection, and tailored separates had subtle details that declared to the world, “I’m not a regular jacket, I’m a cool jacket” and meant it. On the opening look, a single-breasted blazer had a button at the lapel so that you can wear it closed at the neck, which created a kind of mandarin collar; one jacket seemed to have been hybridized with a bomber; another was liberally sprinkled with a few welt pockets as decoration. Smilovic’s take on tailoring is above all easy, and is well suited for people that like to wear suits for fun and those who have to wear suits to work. The fact that Smilovic featured many male models wearing those exact same suits is further proof of her one-size-fits-all-stylish-denizens approach. She also played with tech-y fabrics, turning the classic windbreaker into a slouchy blouson-ish top, and adding a groovy exposed zipper down the front of track pants.
The big news this season, perhaps, was an emphasis on an extra dropped-waist silhouette: low slung pants and skirts are a given, but more novel was a sweater with belt loops at the hem, worn with an asymmetrical striped skirt. A handkerchief-esque skirt was designed to be worn tied up or down, and many other garments featured swooping panels that added unexpected volume to otherwise straightforward silhouettes. The pair of parachute dresses that closed the show showed so much movement that this reviewer looked around to see where the fan was blowing from, but there was none, of course.
