The Garment’s Charlotte Eskildsen didn’t have to look far for inspiration this season. The 19th-century Danish artist Vilhelm Hammershøi—whose work marries simplicity and serenity—lived not far from The Garment’s atelier in Copenhagen. The Francophile designer borrowed the artist’s palette and his model’s poses for a pre-fall collection and look book in which she made a connection between the “hidden narratives” of the doors of Paris, which she obsessively photographs, and the element of mystery in Hammershøi’s work. The result is a sophisticated, yet spare and refined collection softened with drapes and lingerie touches.
“Minimalism is not a subtraction, but an intensification, a focus on the essential,” Eskildsen wrote in her notes. What she felt was indispensable this season was a feeling for something feminine and poetic. To that end, she incorporated ’90s-style slip dressing into the offering, and balanced it with structured looks, notably a leather taxi jacket, inspired by ’80s films set in New York.
You can count on The Garment for a good pair of pants and a neat suit; note the pleated, full-legged white trousers you see in the look book and the pantsuit with collarless jacket. Elsewhere, there was a weather-treated trench with a scarf that buttons on and off, and a pearl gray knit set with scallops at the button placket and skirt hem. Like Hammershøi, Eskildsen is interested in back views. For pre-fall, she cut a jacket in half lengthwise to expose the back in fresh looking ways.
