It’s easy to forget, these days, but the origins of the “Resort collectsion” were in travel: Luxury designers’ wealthy clientele made a habit of setting sail for warm climes in the snowy season, and thus, starting in the 20th century, were catered to with mini-collectsions fit for the annual pilgrimage. The link between what Resort was, then, and what it is now, is tendril thin. But Erin Beatty and Max Osterweis seized it with a firm grasp for their Suno collectsion this season. These were clothes for the woman who, like Forster’s Lucy Honeychurch, has her Baedeker out and her passage booked.
A “Grand Tour” spirit threaded through the collectsion in various ways. There were a few very sly winks at Edwardian tourist aesthetics—nothing overt, just a smattering of tan-toned linens, full skirts, and floral prints and jacquards riffing on Western reinterpretations of chinoiserie. Mainly, though, Beatty and Osterweis went after the attitude one associates with intrepid female travelers of the steamship era, conjuring an attitude plucky yet genteel. The collectsion’s gingham and pinstripe and denim, for instance, had the winning lack of pretense one associates with clothes destined for a day on the hoof, while the coy silhouettes reflected both a bygone sense of modesty and, what with their winks of shoulder and collarbone, a modern boldness. Beatty and Osterweis also connived a few interesting tricks, such as knitting a slit into a ribbed pencil skirt, such that a blouse could be pulled through the back for a bustle-like effect. The collectsion wasn’t vintage-y, but it knew its history. And in its mix-and-matchability, it was well-suited for wanderlust.
