Creatures Of Comfort Spring 2018 Ready-To-Wear....Fashionweekly....On Fow24news.com

For “Dust,” the latest collection from Creatures of Comfort, creative director Jade Lai drew from the South of France, where labor and leisure go hand in hand. “I wanted easy, breezy, easy to care for clothes,“ she explained, citing French female cyclists and local farmers as particular points of inspiration. “Colors sun-bleached and lived-in, like you’re on holiday.”.......

The show took place in a West Village loft with painted white benches and brick. Sunlight poured through the windowpanes and onto the faded fabrics, beginning with a sleeveless linen jumpsuit in washed-out gray, topped with a marigold silk-wrapped visor. There were striped cotton poplins in Santon-style shapes and the pretty white eyelet blouses one expects from a Provençal collection. What stood out were the many aprons, reimagined every which way: A soft wrap skirt; a pale blue button-down dress over a white sack; and a series of little diamond-dotted cloths, tied jauntily to one side over white peplums. There were also a few takes on classic French underpinnings, like lurid green pantaloons trimmed with lace.

Backstage, Lai’s mood board was unexpectedly pinned with photographs from Jackie Nickerson’s Farm, a photographic series that captured the agrarian culture of Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and South Africa. Those humanistic portraits informed the show’s styling—such as the white cable-knits wrapped around the waist—and the brighter colors that characterized the second half of the show. Consider a languid silk dress the color of ripe mango. Though simple in execution, the sudden departure took the viewer out of France—somewhere further afield, but comfortably so.