Baja East Spring 2018 Ready-To-Wear .......Fashionweekly.......On Fow24news.com

John Targon and Scott Studenberg’s Baja East is evolving in what appears to be the right direction. Preshow, the duo spoke as we walked down Broadway (side note: it was kind of different and definitely energizing to do a mobile interview) of making parts of their line more affordable.....
There will always be the “wealthy Miami and Aspen types” who go for the label’s now well-established lush cashmeres et al., but for Spring they augmented their offering with increased price-tag diversity. Think denim in collaboration with Hudson, a full swimwear package, eyewear done with Haze and footwear in partnership with Melissa.

And in that process, Targon and Studenberg ended up amping up their design factor. This season promises plenty of variety, from ’90s lamé dresses—worn squared at the neckline and slit up the leg by the perma-flawless Karlie Kloss—to lace oxford shirts to off-the-shoulder wrapped tops to very-cool, very-smart athleisure pieces, including hoodies and track pants featuring palm trees lifted from the duo’s own tattoos as racing stripes. “We like the nimbleness,” said Targon, after referring to the collection as a take on a kind of faulty paradise. (There were airs of São Paulo, where they’ve taken over the Galeria Melissa store in addition to the company’s New York City outpost.) At times, the collection was scattershot in range, but in the end it congealed well—a Baja bouillabaisse of downtown edge with luxe-but-more-attainable petaling. (Speaking of flowers, there was also a series of printed marijuana blooms—not the leaves—which recalled, partially but very distantly, Givenchy’s Spring 2012 collection.)

Targon and Studenberg, as always, proposed “gender obsolescent” pieces, too; an XXL crushed-velvet blazer in lilac and a python-mimicking knit jumper were notable takeaways. With all of the above, they still effectively mixed in their signatures: a BE logo, a stampeding-horse motif, and the word thriving printed on a one-piece maillot. It wasn’t 100 percent, but it wasn’t meant to be. “It’s a loose utopia,” said Studenberg. “But it’s not perfect. Because being perfect is fucking annoying.”