For spring, designer Jackie JS Lee didn’t look far for inspiration. Lee shares a studio with upholsterer Alex Cartel, who would spend her days taking apart old furniture and restuffing them into new iterations. Lee saw Cartel’s work in progress and it was the half-finished sofas that caught the designer’s eye. Lee loved how the perfectly finished front half was juxtaposed with the rawness of the unfinished back, and took that as her starting point.
Lee’s collections have always imbued a sense of femininity with a boyish edge. There’s a respect for English tailoring and fabrications and this season, she sent out a series of wool jackets that mirrored Cartel’s work — well finished and tailored from the front but exposed raw edges in the back. Lee also explored layering and colorblocking, introducing sculptural cropped shoulder covers that sat atop jackets and shirting, and layered under thinly strapped slipdresses. Overcoats featured iterations of houndstooth check mixed together while striped cotton macs had contrasting shoulders and collars. Also included were low-slung skirts worn over slim ankle-grazing trousers, giving a nod to the tradition of covering old sofas with new material during the upholstery process.
Lee worked with a warm palette of buttercup yellow, sandstone, gray, red, metallic silver and white, which could be seen throughout in jumpsuits, fluid dresses, wide pleated trousers, as well as in the men’s wear collection.
Launch Gallery: J JS Lee RTW Spring 2019
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