Joseph (Q1975)
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| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Joseph |
No description defined |
Statements
2009
creative director
1974
collaborator
You build a house, and then you live in it. Susana Clayton has taken the past year and a half to build Joseph to be the brand she wanted, smoothing out some of its hard lines and adding a luscious warmth to its always-minimal aesthetic. For fall 2020 she took a step back from building—she has already upped sales for Joseph a reported 300%—and did some living. With this collection, she affirmed her silhouettes, her colors, and her codes.Her biggest contribution to the Joseph maison is a slight A-line, midi silhouette that carries across categories. In the look book, Clayton often styles it tripartite: a roomy blazer, a pleated skirt, and pooling-hem trousers. The look would seem fussy, but Clayton reports that women in her office have taken to styling their pieces that way. Separated, these are the wardrobe workhorses that women will rely on season after season, and she introduces them in a wide range of hues, textures, and an abstracted argyle print. Clayton has also explored color this season, building out a diaspora of rich beige, caramel, honey, and lilac-hewing gray—rich tones that belie a playful irreverence. Hers is a happy home at Joseph.
28 February 2020
There’s something of the steel magnolia about Susana Clayton. Beneath a cool, soft-spoken demeanor, the Lisbon-born, Paris-trained and -based designer seems to know her mind and, more to the point, exactly who she is talking to. Customers have caught on fast: Joseph’s sales are reported to have tripled since she signed on a year ago.An architect by training, Clayton has long since transposed her degree to fashion by working, variously, for the trend bureau Peclers before moving into the atelier with Vanessa Bruno, and then racking up high-fashion experience at Chanel, Givenchy (twice, both early and late in Riccardo Tisci’s tenure), and Chloé, and at stateside stints at Gap and Rag & Bone. Most recently, she headed design for Golden Goose in Venice.“I never set out saying to myself [that] I was going to work with this or that brand, I just sort of went with the flow,” says the 45-year-old designer. As fate would have it, the paths she chose converge neatly at Joseph. “I can totally identify with what Joseph was doing—it’s refined but casual, with that French touch,” she said. “Personally, I feel more French than anything; it’s the school of attention to detail, quality, the high standards.”Clayton herself looks like the perfect reflection of Joseph’s image, or maybe it’s the other way around. “It’s not too feminine or frilly, it’s confident and solid,” she offered during a visit on set at the shoot for the pre-fall look book. For sure, she cuts a mean pair of trousers, favoring the crisp, travel-friendly qualities of dry wool. She’s also a believer in the masculine/feminine mix, well represented here in the classic allure of a men’s shirt, silk tweeds, lush cashmere, and leather that’s not tricked out, as on a sleeveless caramel dress with a pleated skirt. Another soapbox: outerwear with staying power—a glossy, sleeveless black shearling, a tailored checked overcoat, or a graceful rust-colored cape. If some looks shown here skew a bit boxy, no matter—the Joseph customer knows how to parse her uniform.Quiet sophistication was the cornerstone of the original Joseph philosophy. With a ’90s aesthetic once again on the rise and so many heritage minimalists MIA, Clayton’s Joseph is shaping up to be a go-to for a base desperately seeking impeccable clothes without any white noise.
2 December 2019
Consistency is the name of the game at Joseph, where Susana Clayton is hitting her stride as creative director. The long, body-skimming silhouettes the brand was known for under Clayton’s predecessor continue, as does the focus on smart tailoring and midlength skirts. A Moroccan theme—started in her pre-collection—reached its zenith for Spring 2020, inspired by the heritage of the brand’s founder, Joseph Ettedgui. It’s in this reference that Clayton allowed herself a sense of playfulness, bringing in rich tangerine colors, crafty tweed and knit fabrications, and eclectic styling best epitomized in the pairing of the butter leather tunic with pooling lilac trousers. She spoke of looking for a natural sense of imperfection, using tea dyes and linens to bring an earthen feel to the clothes and launching a small capsule of macramé bags.But this being Joseph, the collection remained primarily about wardrobe dressing in urban centers. Clayton was wise to cut the eclecticism with crisp leather tailoring, blown-up logo prints, and wine-hued satin separates that had—dare say us—a sort of sexy appeal. The shift from austere to exciting that’s happened at Joseph under Clayton’s early tenure is small to the outside eye, but welcome. Yes, these are still the sort of clothes women rely on for instant polish and sophistication, but thanks to some clever experimentation and a little relaxing of the rules, they’re also pieces that can brighten up a closet.
29 September 2019
Since arriving as creative director of Joseph nine months ago, Susana Clayton said she has been taking time to “understand the company I have in my hands and to decide what I want to tell of it, what to appropriate…the goal is to keep it real.” Clayton added that her instinct is to look back to the mien of the founder Joseph Ettedgui, who had a very defined, mostly monochrome personal style. For this collection Clayton found for inspiration a marvelous but distinctly non-monochrome image of Ettedgui standing alongside Margaret Howell and two others in a photograph that surely dates from the 1980s but that also emanated a strongAnnie Hallvibe: a symphony of beiges played in creased linen and wheaty knits.Via a thematic jaunt to Morocco—that red print on viscose short, shirt, and robe coat is re-creation of a vintage Moroccan stamp—this was the basis of a collection of obviously thought-through garments. Beyond that print and the blanket stripes on ponchos, there was an interesting gridded palm print reflected in irregularly pleated habutai silk skirts and dresses that were sometimes layered against tailored jackets and double-hemmed pants. Shinily finished, linen chintz short-armed djellabas in black or ivory were paired with full, crease-legged pants in the same fabric. More fitted round-necked equivalents came in olive or brighter ceramic-inspired shades of nappa or suede. A fine bonded stretch cotton macintosh teamed with an extended workwear shirtdress, voile paneled T-shirts, pared-down pieces in light denim, and softly tailored blazers and trousers in check double-faced wool-cashmere blend were all not at all Moroccan flavored but, hey, they looked pretty good.
30 May 2019
The comings and goings of creative directors are the bread and butter of this industry, intel and gossip that can fuel front rows for seasons if not years. Yet at Joseph, the stoically essential British brand, no such drama will be entertained. After Louise Trotter, who had helmed the ship with a casually posh eye for years, departed for Lacoste, Susana Clayton was installed. What would happen?Not much. For one, Joseph still shows in the same showroom in Paris—no more shows—that, in an Uber ride across Paris, can feel like a stop in a morebohèmecasual world by the canal. Inside, the routine and much of the ideology is the same: clothes a woman needs, hung orderly on rails, camel-colored or ivory or burgundy. According to those in charge, Clayton wants to bring it closer to the body, a little tighter while still being both comfortable and comforting. Strange for a designer making a big debut to be absent on her big debut day, but perhaps it’s a statement about the clothes speaking for themselves. But what does a poncho buttoned up like a bandolier say about closeness, rigor, or practicality?Maybe smart to focus outside of the styling tricks. The Joseph basics are best: elongated trousers, accommodating pleated skirts, one very covetable black pony-hair jacket. Even jersey is given the just-slightly-luxe treatment, double-faced as a stiff turtleneck or a boxy tee. It’s priced as enough of an investment to be above the everyday category but has a cleverness that could convince a shopper to come back for the shearling shoes or the hand-knit sweater.
1 March 2019
Joseph is in a transitional period. Its long-standing creative director Louise Trotter has left, and her incoming replacement Susana Clayton will not show her first men’s collection until Spring 2020 (how weird it is to think about 2020 only a week into 2019).So as things change over, the management at Joseph played it easy for Fall; they checked off a list of fail-safe menswear sartorial codes with tailoring, military, hints of ’70s-era silhouettes, and mostly muted colors all included. That may sound a bit boring, but the often convincing thing with Joseph is that, even though it looks straightforward at first glance, there are usually details that give its offerings a little something extra. This is helpful in a consumer landscape where it feels like there is so, so much of the same thing available, from high street to the high end.Layered trenches, a puffa greatcoat with argyle-mimicking topstitching, and a sleek jogger pant with a raised cargo pocket at the very top of the left thigh were the best in show, or at least the most singular. Everything else was par for the course, but Joseph is not a brand that’s going to opt for fireworks over reliability.
8 January 2019
This was a doubly transitional collection. Conventionally for Pre-Fall, its delivery will run from the lightweight days of May to the outerwear-curious month of July. More exceptionally, this is the first of two in-limbo collections created between the tenures of former artistic director Louise Trotter and her successor, Susana Clayton.Clayton has already stated that she intends to “realign” Joseph on her watch to make it consistent with her interpretation of the vision of its founder, Joseph Ettedgui. For now there was no inkling of the changes to come. The transition here proved strictly seasonal and still felt inflected by a post-Trotter pendulum, swinging between masculine and feminine. This was expressed via smockish fluid dresses in florally bastardized dogtooth, a catalog of tailored pant shapes in stretch gabardine, a softly tailored Le Smoking, a gray marled woolen utility pant and high-waisted military shirt, a lounge-lizard camel hair shawl-collar coat, and a pared-down duffle coat in a fantastically violent shade of orange. This color pulsed on an irresistibly tactile napa leather padded mailer-like bag, the occasional shoe, and some of the dresses, too. Alongside a brace of super-shaggy shearlings, that orange interlude provided the loudest shout in what was for the most part an impeccably even-toned exercise in slouchily luxurious apparel.
4 December 2018
So, Joseph. Yesterday, it announced Givenchy, Chloé, Gap, and Rag & Bone alum—and former trend forecaster—Susana Clayton as its creative director following the departure of Louise Trotter. Clayton has yet to slide her feet under the Joseph desk: This collection is the penultimate Trotter-authored collection we will see.It was very her. After so many showroom appointments—too many recently, following Joseph’s fall from the show schedule and failure to do much else instead of them—I could almost see Trotter’s gesticulating and hear her describing a collection that featured lots of interaction between menswear workwear detail and rough and smooth fabrications, which of course featured leather shirting, a shirt dress, and quirkily hacked, wide-cut pants.Trenches and shirts featured accentuated and unfastened leather storm flaps over silk. A fine pale olive utility jacket and a generously volumed chambray blue trench featured the same Trotterish twist without the contrasting fabric. Another was the linen boucle mini apron above a skirt of pistachio plissé silk, meant to lower the emphasis of a full look topped by a blazer in the same boucle. Leather trousers featured long drawstring pockets—pouches, really—on the front of each leg, a motif repeated in silk on a pair of red leather shorts. A muslin-feel-but-voile folkish blouse that came with a hood was a nice mix of analog retro and sportswear contemporaneousness. A fitted jersey dress in pale blue was, simply, that.
25 September 2018
Francesco Muzi, last seen at Z Zegna following long stints at Miu Miu and Prada, has popped up again—this time at Joseph. He charmingly apologized for his perfectly acceptable English before delivering a run-through of a totally coherent collection. This Italian worked with an idea that was a contrast between the styles of the two rivieras that reflect the identity of Joseph: the Cornish coast and the Cote d’Azur.Like, oh, perhaps 50 percent of the designers I’ve spoken to this season, Muzi talked about uniform as a theme. This was reflected in the single-color looks of a soft field shirt and wide short in tobacco linen/cotton or the same shirt (but in suede) and some pants in a bold, English mustard yellow that would cause a stir if seen in St. Ives.Trousers teamed with tailored jackets were hemmed mid-calf: Muzi said he’d imagined his man paddling in them, which was sweet. There were some really lovely loose and long pants with six “disordered” irregular pleats on each side. Tracksuits in a treated jersey in blue, black, or yellow again had a fine, substantial hand-feel and looked pleasing to wear. Some of the shirts came with removable belts that were actually ties: a detail whose tricksiness felt a little redundant. Really lovely was a shirt in two variations of the same stripe and the short-sleeved silk shirt in a floral taken from Louise Trotter’s Resort collection (although not featured in its lookbook). Fine but not dandy, this was a convincing collection of refinedly easy menswear.
22 June 2018
Louise Trotter is focused on meeting the needs and wants of the Joseph customer, and for her, that process is as much about considering how a garment feels and functions as it is about how it looks. This puts me rather at a disadvantage when assessing her collections, of course.However, that a pale blue volumized dress in panels of differently patterned broderie anglaise looked easily beautiful I can totally attest. A little silk suite of plissé skirt, shirt, and long dress in two variations of a check taken from a man’s cravat then tweaked for color were also lovely to the eye. Her shaggy sheepskin slippers and kitten heels were both appealing, the slippers cute in their twistedness. An oversized coat/shirtdress felt both substantial and light to the touch thanks to its construction in acetate viscose and carried an aspect of dramatic authority. Black nappa overshirts and slouchy pants, gently floral silk shirts with attachable scarves, pleated skirts, and lace-trimmed slip dresses and skirts were all fine examples of their kind.Trotter said: “I think we have to give people a reason to buy nowadays in a world where we have everything. And it’s often the nuances and the details—aspects we are obsessed with—that inspire customers.”
22 June 2018
What? No show? Joseph’s creative director, Louise Trotter, explained that she was presenting this collection by appointment in Joseph’s Paris headquarters instead of on a runway in London because, “We’re taking a pause . . . to decide where we want to show and how we want to show.”Instead, Trotter and her team shot these looks in a bar/tabacby the Gare du Nord, where her handsome leather or gabardine trenches plus double-alpaca overcoats—some built for creative double jacketing and featuringtrès-Trotter extra-cape details—fit serenely in.There was a gentle tension in the interplay of natural versus synthetic that ran through the collection, whether via digital prints designed to appear analog, the occasional overt nylon-polyester flash amid a sea of organic fabrics, or the interjection of consciously lurid, carefully placed pops of color against a natural, neutral backdrop. After consideration of Trotter’s attractive oat-toned, by-strap-adaptable skirts and tailoring in checks, a pleated skirt in plastic bag blue matched with a sheeny silky top over blue faux-gaitered boots fairly slapped you in the eye. A pony overcoat in zebra stripe was another flirtation with the boundaries of decorative restraint to which Joseph usually subjects itself.As already noted in this season’s review for the excellent Lemaire, the world faces a critically imminent shortage of Philo-flavored Céline. Joseph is another possible source of consolation for those who mourn the loss.
2 March 2018
Louise Trotter’s Pre-Fall collection for Joseph draws, mainly, from menswear and military wardrobes. She admits that these broad-sweeping inspirations can be a bit “banal,” and to enliven them, she pondered ways to make their tenets and codes a bit “off.”It worked. Trotter is fastidious in her approach, whether it be in finding the exact right shade of suede for a “military caftan dress” (brown with a purplish afterglow), researching old scarves and thus injecting bursts of vibrancy on foulard tops, or placing the button of a sleeve on the front of a cuff as opposed to the side. Her focus is palpable, and it makes sense—Joseph’s in-house line, be it for women or men, revolves around uniforms. It is not meant to push any envelopes. But Trotter moves the needle within her own rubric, and the results are consistent and reliable.Further evidence: pea or car coats in shaggy sheepskin, which sheared traditionalism into something strangely glam. There was also a beautiful “broken” pin-striped canvas skirt, and another in Prince of Wales check with tiered pleating and “even a bit of a sexy slit.”This collection, at times, might have pulled from the kind of gallery chic tone of Phoebe Philo’s Céline, but Trotter’s concentration lent the lineup more of a type A particularity. Solid stuff. As a postscript: Joseph is introducing sunglasses with this collection, and they will be available in February.
8 January 2018
Joseph has a new menswear designer named Francesco Muzi. Earlier in life, he worked for Z Zegna—and while Louise Trotter oversees all of Joseph’s output, Muzi has been in the men’s role for “a few months,” and, as to be expected, finding one’s footing takes time. Trotter did the talking.“We try to make the men’s and women’s collections really tightly together,” she said. “There’s a heavy importance on fit and tailoring, but a renewed tailoring, so to speak. The proportions are slightly off. And the tonality is also essential.”There were clear crossovers between men’s Fall and women’s Pre-Fall, like a stiff Japanese wool-blend textile in a blue-black-and-white scheme, “jumbo” corduroy pants, and Fair Isle and Prince of Wales treatments. But where the women’s side was exacted, the men’s didn’t seem as wholly realized; again, not exactly surprising, given that Trotter and Muzi have only worked together for a short period of time.What was good: a micro-gingham checked shirt, tucked into flat-front pants (which were reiterated throughout). It created a nice long bodily line and supported Trotter’s “renewed” thought. Another standout was a brushed check car-slash-blanket coat, which was graphic and cozy-chic in tandem. Other parts, though, like blouse-y button-downs, heavy cardigans, and extended turtlenecks, didn’t come across quite as fresh. Let’s wait to see how things go once Muzi gets further settled.
8 January 2018
There was a very good Joseph show lurking inside the one that the brand staged tonight. Louise Trotter had keyed in to the theme of uniforms, and was riffing on various roles the uniform-wearer inhabits by putting one on: scout, businessman, chambermaid. And then, layered against that theme, was another, related one: the way that people unburden themselves of those day-gig identities when they take off on holiday. When Trotter kept tight to those ideas, the collection packed real punch. There was an appealing and to some degree poignant exchange between the collection’s trim suits and scout-style looks, with squared-off shirt pockets, and outfits that introduced gestures of openness or dishevelment into those garments, to wit, blazers with the back cut open, or scout-style shirtdresses with some post-suitcase crinkle in the fabric.It would have been nice if Trotter had addressed her uniform concept with a bit more, well, uniformity. The mix of types of uniforms was fine—and there was an interesting concept lurking, too, in the really summery looks, like the tent dresses in patchwork eyelet or the cricket-white men’s separates; holiday kit is its own kind of uniform, you perceived. What vexed was Trotter’s insistence on playing unnecessary games with volume and proportion. The exaggeration of the tailoring, in particular, seemed not to have any justification beyond an attempt to editorialize the collection. In fact, it would have looked much sharper, with a clearer point of view, had Trotter been patient with her more classic silhouettes, and told her story through subtler gestures. A surprising turn in the palette, or fabric selections like Trotter’s crinkled materials, sufficed to get the point across. She needn’t have worried about boring us.
18 September 2017
Mark Thomas incorporated Louise Trotter’s Joseph resort theme—the art and personal style of David Hockney—into this menswear collection, and thus there were many overlaps: the landscape knit, the geometric knit, the mid corduroy, the checks in knits translated from women’s dresses to men’s polo shirts or women’s dresses into men’s pajama suits. Yet there were collection-specific notes here too. These included plastic-coated poplin parka-anorak hybrids in mismatched ’70s checks or fisherman-slick navy and yellow, bold check pajama suits, heavily pressed ’70s touched tailoring, and off-kilter polka-dotted longish boxer shorts.Fitted nylon and cotton jackets were given purposely loose jersey linings to allow the fabric inside to spill out down the zipper line for a flash of color when worn open. A pajama-striped rugby shirt—totally Hockney—came in 18-guage wool worn over loose Bengal striped shirts and boxers. A pressed blue oversize topcoat came with a belt at the base of the sternum for cinching. A western-style jacket was recast in double-faced tobacco twill worn above pressed brushed linen pants and a checkerboard shirt. Those pajama suits in gingham mentioned near the top were an extrovert garden-partyer’s paradise: Made in viscose with fully articulated trousers, they could have as appropriately inhabited a Hockney canvas as they would cut a swathe at some stylish rave.
10 June 2017
We all know aboutDavid Hockney, especially all of us here in the U.K. Yet asJoseph’s creative director, Louise Trotter, talked through an engaging Resort collection dedicated to the 79-year-old subject of a wonderful just-closed exhibition at Tate Britain, she paid homage to one of the artist’s lesser celebrated attributes. She said, “What’s great when you study him is that he truly understands the complexity of dressing.” Trotter clearly has been studying him, because this collection contained many elements of both Hockney’s personal style and preferred palette. Pressed felt suiting with three buttons, patch pockets, and a slightly ’70s canter came in a green reminiscent of Ossie Clark’s outfit in Hockney’s 1971 portraitMr and Mrs Clark and Percy. The polka dots in viscose shirting or sleeveless silk tops with attached narrow cravats came in either black, white, or slightly askew color combinations. They were in honor of Laura, Hockney’s much-portrayed mother, who wore them often. The fabulous wide-cut, high-rise, single-pleat cords in Eton blue or custard were totally Trotter’s portrait of the artist.This collection, though, was more than a mere exercise in joining-the-dots to the person who inspired it. A polo shirt dress or lengthened kilt in brown and orange check, a gorgeous mint leather coat equally usable as a dress, a naive landscape sweater featuring dabbed sheep, and a Brownies homage featuring a leather shirt and a long A-line sateen skirt were all convincingly broader brush strokes. The front, low, and central sporty ruched detail that ran through skirts and dresses—including one fine white silk example with gently flocked, ditzy florals—were typical of Trotter’s own process, as was the strapping at the waistband of pants and inside jackets that will allow the wearer to cinch herself securely within volumized silhouettes. Totally off the Hockney trail was Joseph’s new collection of Italian-made bags and backpacks, which featured a signature diagonal zipper detail and were designed to be modular and Matryoshka-esque in their capacity to fit together. Trotter and her team are hoping that they make a bigger splash—sorry—than previous efforts in this category, and they look well equipped to do just that.
9 June 2017
Long, undone, and often asymmetrical silk dresses in grandma florals paired with swagger and boots. Oversize outerwear worn off the shoulder. Clashing florals and color-blocks. Squint and scroll through the shows this season so far—or look at who’s wearing what in the audience—and you’ll see plenty of all of the above. Demna Gvasalia’s influential work at Vetements has gone viral (almost as fast as Christophe Decarnin’s bold shoulder at Balmain did at the turn of the decade).This is not an exercise in calling out—no designer is an island. Individuals must look to a broader visual vernacular that is ever shifting and that sometimes, thanks to a single designer, shifts fast. What Joseph’s Louise Trotter produced here was an up-to-the-minute conversation that acknowledged that language but enunciated it in a voice totally her own. That handsome oversize suiting in drill or jacquard, the topstitched overalls, and the British Expeditionary Force baggy olive jumpsuit were consistent with Trotter’s ongoing exploration of the limits of masculine uniform on behalf of the feminine—as she said, “to make the purposeful decorative.” Against that masculine, she explained after the show, she wanted to design something complementarily feminine in its skewed amplification. Appropriately subversive was the pink bodysuit under the military green; the high-shine coat and dress, trimmed with lace, in a poppy red that ran through this collection; and those floral and color-blocked dresses. Details were left seemingly unresolved: zips undone, hems frayed, collars twisted, and stitches burst as if to suggest work in progress—because when is it not?
21 February 2017
Louise Trotter was packing up her belongings to move house recently when she stumbled upon a trove of photos from her childhood. “There were lots of pictures of my parents—it was from around the late ’70s—and it was fascinating to look at the way men and women really dressed at that time. What fascinated me was how feminine the women look, and the men, too.”This led directly to the insertion of the Liberty archive ditzy-print dresses and blouses, the patch-pocketed suiting in off-Wedgwood blue and old Colman’s mustard hues, the Fair Isle sweaters, and the tricolor dogtooth-check outwear. Trotter is determinedly anti-banal, however—so everything came with a twist. The blouses were carefully articulated via odd button, extended sleeve, and lateral pussy bow to be subtly future-facing. The sweaters had slits at each armpit to enable sleeveless wearing—and if you tied them together, a phantom embrace. The suiting and outerwear was either disjunctively oversize or subtly reductive: This was the traditional worked to feel nontraditional.A frankly slightly odd pant cinched at the ankle with a wide strap was, Trotter insisted, easy and free to walk in. A fantastic treatment of Harris Tweed—the most gorgeous, romantic fabric but itchy as hell—left it soft and fluid in interesting military pants and jackets. Pinstriped artist’s smock and pant combinations, a reimagined carriage coat, ruffle-necked handsomely flecked knitwear, and oversize aviators in cracked sheepskin were other less ’70s but notable pieces in a collection full of standouts. The fabrication and feel of Trotter’s Joseph womenswear is wonderful. Were this 1978—or 2078—I’d willingly wear it myself.
10 January 2017
“It’s a car coat in the front, and a parka in the back,” said Joseph’s head menswear designer Mark Thomas today, flipping the tawny, tweedy garment to show the graft (all heritage at first, but with an athletic, visible cinch around the lumbar region). The piece was one in a uniformly strong outerwear roster at the label’s Fall 2017 collection. In fact, most everything Joseph unveiled today was solid.The lineup’s beginnings came from creative director Louise Trotter’s move of house last year—an experience she found momentous, as many do, because “you’re leaving behind memories.” One of those flashbacks came in the form of an unearthed photograph of her parents in the ’70s, “when the men had a bit of femininity in what they wore.”That inception took Trotter and Thomas to a place that clashed British traditionalism (Donegals, officers’ coats, Fair Isles) with a more contemporary, more universal sense of slouch, purposeful street appeal, and subsequent, faint unisexuality. Hence the Jekyll and Hyde car coat-cum-parka, or the “blouse shape” Oxford shirts in ’70s-era colors, striped in the sorts of garish yellows or sun-bleached blues one might see in a Slim Aarons photograph. Other parts worth shouting out: a steely tweed blazer that had zipper inlays on the tail, a pressed black-and-scarlet turtleneck knit, a floor-teasing taupe anorak with flattened sleeves, and a “bled” Fair Isle sweater (also in unexpected hues). The mix was big and jumpy, but its calibration wasn't wobbly. This being Joseph, though, Trotter and Thomas made sure to stay disciplined—“to really think about what we’re outputting”—so as to remain special yet accessible.
8 January 2017
Journeymetaphors have reached their final destination. Is any analogy more overused? Yet, apologies: This collection was, indeed, a journey. And a pretty pleasurable one at that.Louise Trotter is a sensitive connoisseur of the subverted uniform. The first steps she took for this collection was with a series of deconstructed (and then reconstructed) menswear shirts, trench overcoats, wrap dresses, and shirtdresses whose proportions were emphasized—plenty of overlong sleeves cuffed by drawstring—and which came with cosmetic suggestions that they had been only half put on. Then we turned a corner into sportswear territory: K-Way zip-ups were worn half-packed as slung protrusion. Two interesting looks layered perforated knits under scrunchily transparent knitted polyester: wrapping dresses.The further the collection proceeded, the more elements were heaped within each look. Like tank tops of mesh worn under fringed multicolored tops and paired with asymmetrical plastic skirts. Or oversize Windrunner riffs under bonded transparent topcoats. The menswear was shown alongside the womenswear for the first time and complemented it. The last few ensembles were almost kaleidoscopically complicated to the eye, apparently several outfits somehow worn at once. In fact, Trotter explained afterward, some incorporated semi-developed prototypes that were thought up while preparing the final collection. Others were a purposeful assemblage of banal garments into extraordinary collectives. Trotter is traveling an appealingly unorthodox path atJoseph, repurposing uniforms to defy the categorizations they evolved to define.
20 September 2016
For Spring,Joseph’s Louise Trotter and Mark Thomas went, in Thomas’s words, for an aesthetic that combined “workwear, military, and a kind of painter’s garb”. Yet, where the utility generally inherent in those garments might skew towards bulky (pockets, straps, etc.), the designers focused on a different sort of pragmatism: one of everyday ease.This meant whittling down the details. A white canvas coat was long and straight—topstitching and subtle metal rivets nodded to Trotter and Thomas’s jumping-off point. A lightweight cotton shirt-jacket in deep indigo featured smart contrast tabs (Thomas's favorite), quietly referencing bars on officers’ coats. There was also an eye-catching zipper detail on a few pieces. The fastenings arced down the front part of the shoulders to about a third of the way down the arm—see a boiled-wool jumper in periwinkle, or an olive-dyed bomber.One thing worth noting here: Trotter highlighted her and Thomas’s continued focus on color, on an exact, albeit purposely “off” palette. “It’s because—when you’re working with pieces that are quite simple, really, how do you make them into must-haves?” When you’re selling stuff with this much general appeal, it’s true—the differentiation has to be addressed in the fundamentals, and, for the most part, the Joseph team did just that today.
12 June 2016
Every collection Louise Trotter designs begins with the pant: “That’s what Joseph is famous for. So I start with the trouser that I want to wear and build up from that.” This Resort, Trotter’s trouser-divination led her to two key styles; navel-grazing, full-legged remixed cargo pants in silky-touch sateen and south-of-the-knee leather Bermudas in cranberry. Both cargo pants and Bermuda shorts are also integral elements in two very different uniforms, one military, one national, and this hinted at the broader preoccupation of this collection.Trotter trawled a broad swathe of time and place for the uniforms whose functional elements she refigured as decorative. First there was the uniform of sin: a pair of tapered, striped pants in robust linen/cotton were, she said, based on 1920s prison issue. At the end she had a full cardinal red collarless dress that smacked of the cassock. In between were duster coats, one in a lovely yolky yellow that came top-stitched with chore coat pocket details. A full skirt in khaki drill, far lighter than it looked, featured trapunto stitch quilting at its belt and hem, while a reversible shearling jacket aped the shape of an M65 lining. The exaggerated sailor collar detail on a long, loosely skirted backless dress worked marvelously as an unlikely uniter of surplus and seductiveness.Motif in chief in this detail-rich collection was the apron, issued as whimsical appendix to dungaree dresses, prison-striped hopsack separates, and Wedgwood blue shirting in which it came as a removable bib. This was a beguiling attempt to construct a uniform for now out of the many uniforms of then.
8 June 2016
This was a bold collection from Louise Trotter atJoseph. On her watch, this London retail/design house has done a strong job of emphasizing its USP as a manufacturer of upscale, sophisticated but pragmatically wearable luxurious womenswear. Here, though, she went all anti-uniform, total analogue—Etsy on acid with a degree in fashion design. Trotter turned her coats inside out and added corsetry. She ripped pockets from leather shirts moments before they headed out to the runway. She pinned her looks with vintage jewelry in patent leather and mismatched the buttons. “It was basically all about personalization,” Trotter said glibly. In fact, this was about the imposition of imagined wear and backstory onto new clothes—kind of imaginary vintage. Trotter had even recruited her own mother to skein extra wool through her patched jumpers and to twist her tartan silk-blend pants with hook-and-eye corsetry.There was a careful derangement to this collection that will be hard to translate to retail, because, by Trotter’s own admission, she tore up many of the pieces once they came back to Joseph HQ from the factories. That’s not to say there wasn’t plenty of design here, though: Enlarged chevron herringbones shimmied against knit panels and disembodied houndstooths in wide-skirted crazy-girl overcoats; and there were a gazillion other examples of Trotter-focus on display. This show was less about design than feeling: And that feeling was rip it all up and start again. Very now.
22 February 2016
The purposeful skewing of standard proportions across “luxury essentials” was the main plot atJosephtoday. Head of menswear Mark Thomas and creative director Louise Trotter were interested in a joint idea of archival, grandfatherly pieces—cardigans, car coats, “an aristocratic character borrowing heirlooms—kind of heritage, in a way,” said Thomas—and skinny Irish youths wearing clothes that were far too big for their wiry frames. “That came from Perry Ogden’s book,Pony Kids,” added Thomas. “It’s very tribal, very much about a gang, and they all wear a lot of sportswear.” What resulted was an array of cut-just-so separates, perfectly suited for creative layering (think of a wool coat in ebony brown, “the new neutral,” laughed Trotter, over track pants with contrasting racing stripes). The duo is also on trend for the season—and, enjoyably, not in-your-face so—with looser trousers and the employment of velvet.Joseph’s men’s branch is only five seasons old, but evidently it’s off and running and doing well. The brand plans to open its first dedicated men’s store on Savile Row within the month—and it won’t be selling other labels, like many of its existing outlets. That’ll occur in time for Fall deliveries, standouts of which include the aforementioned jacket, flared camel slacks, a knitted merino sweatshirt in ashen gray, and a whip-smart city-boy oxford shirt. Athletic sweats with a tuxedo could be a more difficult sell; likewise a tangerine color. One got the sense that these fell too far afield of the “luxury essentials” manifesto. However, given its young age, Joseph is on the right track.
10 January 2016
Although patently commercial (and why not?), there was an appealing hint of twisted discord in both the styling and proportions of this slyly challengingJosephcollection. Take it as read that the house-specialty faux-tailored, drawstring-waist pants—in satin-coated print, velvet, suede, and a felted cashmere mix—fell wide yet with enough heft to retain break and substance on the leg. The gently remixed overcoats—in progressive fabrications whose incongruous buttons and hidden collar linings pointed to their menswear source code—had swoop and drama almost as satisfying as the slap-in-the-face shades of the shearlings.Louise Trotter said she had been thinking about aristocratic menswear and prim, pretty womenswear, but then spiked that mundane dialectic with reference to “Pony Kids,” Perry Ogden’s 1999 photographic study of Dublin’s working-class suburban pony owners. This wild bunch was the grit in the oyster whose pearls included the incongruously full arms of a banker-ish shirt bunched below the shoulders of a slip dress, or the protrusion of frill collars over slouchy inside-out cashmere sweats. Trotter said she wanted some looks to appear “slightly off,” to snag at the eye without repelling it, and in this she succeeded. Yes this was another menswear/womenswear hybrid collection—but it was not quite by the numbers. Which made it much more interesting to behold.
8 January 2016
“It's become a bit cliched to talk about masculine/feminine now: Everyone's talking about it,” observed an endorphin-pumpedLouise Trotterafter this interesting overload of a show. “I wanted to play more with the role models of a male and a female,” she said. Almost uniquely, this is a subject upon which fashion can be more explicit than words, for clothes are our most potent codifiers of gender.But let’s try and keep up. We started with classically-for-Josephneutral menswear-touched womenswear: Monochrome T-shirts, skirts, and sweats both held together and defined by twist and turn. There were plenty of unexpected rips and twists, whorls of construction. There were bengal stripe versus pencil stripe viscose silk shirtdresses and skirts, plus the odd drop of conventional feminized suiting teamed with sheer tailored men’s shirts with girlishly ribboned cuffs. Then a shot of acid yellow and patent shine black leather signaled what Trotter saw as a break phase in the narrative from girl dressed as boy to—and please bear with me here—girl dressed as boy dressed like girl.This allowed Trotter to blend pretty, gleaming vintage brocades into monkish, military-touched pieces trailed by nylon webbing—this second movement’s equivalent to the knots and bows we’d just seen in the first. Her expression of this mood became less gilded and more repressed—you know, manly—until a last look that took us back, near full-circle, to the first. To see some of the still-shifting ground Trotter was attempting to survey here, see the Fall collections from Gucci or Craig Green. As an overview—and a point of view—this Joseph collection was both dizzying and fascinating.
21 September 2015
At Joseph, head designer Mark Thomas and creative director Louise Trotter were looking back to the brand's heyday in the 1990s—a decade that swapped the over-the-top styles of the '80s for something more simple. They looked at photographs by Corinne Day and David Sims and felt a connection to the pared-down, unfussy dress they wanted to get at.In essence the formula for the collection went like this: Take a familiar piece, then make it look better than it usually does. And so, a classic white shirt was fitted with vents borrowed from sportswear, while a tracksuit got a beetroot-colored leather treatment. Now, this can easily take you down a route that turns out to be a tricky one, as this kind of luxury upgrading runs the risk of coming across as pointless. After all, do you really improve a T-shirt just by making it in an expensive material? Many times the answer is no. (To be fair, Thomas and Trotter tried the opposite tack, too, with jeans and a denim jacket rendered in light gray nylon.) Luckily, the result here felt more thoughtful than pointless, and the collection drew its power from a feeling of finding pieces you already know and love but with better attention to detail. And in the end, even the leather tracksuit bottoms and tee worked.Pieces were generally unstructured, so that they could be more easily layered, and this had led the team to use materials with a bit of "memory," like a suit in a wool and mohair mix. The idea of crease-free, lightweight suiting seemed right for spring/summer. The shirts with a white sports stripe running from collar to sleeve were technically complex but had a simple and powerful graphic effect.Joseph is working hard at establishing what their identity and relevance should be for today's man. They are trying to appeal to a guy who wants to stand out but who feels most at ease when the proposition isn't too challenging and out there. That man should be able to find much to like with this collection.
14 June 2015
Louise Trotter made it all sound so easy. "Really, the core of Joseph is about luxury essentials," she said. "That's what we are known for; it's who we are. So I begin a collection by thinking about what those luxury essentials are for this season, and then ask, 'How can you elevate the everyday?' The desire to have those perfect pieces is the starting point." That process might sound straightforward—and its enunciation refreshingly clear—but in practice, of course, improving pieces whose indispensability makes them ubiquitous is a complicated business indeed.Trotter's chosen essentials for Resort '16 were loosely themed around sportswear as it touched British streets back in the mid-'90s. So that opening gray cashmere pac-a-mac was inspired by the original, pre-reboot, Glastonbury-when-it-was-good, half-zip K-Way. The post-mod Britpop parkas and horizontally seamed track pants looked like a brave attempt to apply the Trotter formula to the most archaic nylon abominations of the Euro '96 era. More broadly there were T-shirts, shirts, shirtdresses, pleated skirts (one wonderfully supple in a washed viscose), and the inescapable culottes. These were expressed in a variety of fabrications: Unctuous napa in subtle, unlikely shades was convincing as a track pant; poplin shirts were elasticated at the waist to create a flattering gather at the hip; and suede tees were given a slit at each hip, which allows you to tuck the front in and let the back flap out. Almost every item, tweaked, was represented in almost every fabrication. Cut, faded, and pasted check and inside-out fade florals were there to signal a had-it-around-forever-ness.What further elevated this collection was the versatility many of the pieces offered. The shirtdresses were presented just as that, but also unbuttoned as a coat. Shirts doubled as jackets, a parka as a dress. The invitation to layer your way pragmatically through the season (and ensure you had purchased everything necessary to do so) was explicit. Trotter's ultimate elevation here was a white T-shirt—the basest of all everyday essentials—which, when twisted, knitted, and slathered with satin, became arguably upscale for evening.
5 June 2015
Fashion season, it bears repeating, is exhausting. Especially in winter, when you're running around to shows in about 14 layers of clothes. London hasn't been as mind-breakingly cold as New York, but still, the idea of huddling under a bunch of blankets has had a certain vivid sex appeal. Which made tonight's Joseph show catnip, really: Alongside her new collection's wide array of seriously cozy knitwear, Joseph creative director Louise Trotter sent out a variety of ensembles that mimicked—pretty exactly—the look of hefty blankets wrapped around the body for warmth. The concept was great, the execution a little on the literal side. As a retailer at the show pointed out, however, Trotter and her Joseph team do a very good job distilling their conceptual runway pieces into commercial looks; they seem to be taking a cue in that regard from Acne, another brand that shoppers rely on for high-end, gently progressive wardrobe staples. It's not a bad strategy.Anyway, blankets. This collection was all about cocooning, taking cover under extra-long coats or squishy thick knits that embraced the body like a hug. There was something rough-hewn about these clothes, despite the luxe fabrications—Trotter was working in a deconstructive mode that gave her shapes a certain naïveté. Still, the tailoring was rigorous, particularly in the sharp tanks that she realized in everything from wool to calf hair, and in the trousers with a perfect slouchy cut. Long, gossamer silk wrap skirts and strapless tops lightened the tone. The standout piece here, perhaps, was a bouclé knit jumpsuit in black with an elongated leg and a shawl-like top that shrugged off the shoulders. The jumpsuit expressed the cocooning theme without hammering it home. Elsewhere, Trotter was on to something with her tonal patchwork sweaters done in cable- and rib-knits. This show was heavy on the neutrals, which wasn't a bad thing, but it made the pop of color and print in the slipdresses that came out at the end especially welcome. Trotter knows her '90s aesthetics, and those dresses were a case study in how to pull off that decade's insouciant look. This was a very wintry collection; those dresses, meanwhile, came off like the first balmy breath of spring.
24 February 2015
"There's a feeling of not having finished dressing, of running between classes," said Mark Thomas, menswear designer at Joseph, explaining the unfussy, relaxed styling of his Fall collection. "Classes?" you ask. Indeed, these were public schoolboys, the types that idle around Eton in a particular mix of ill-fitting formalwear and loose sports clothes. Of course, in the hands of Thomas it didn't look ill-fitting at all, but rather quite foppish. Look, for example, at the reworked gray morning coat, stripped bare and left with rough edges. It was paired with brown tracksuit pants, further reinforcing the high-low, hard-soft theme going on here. A cardigan knit—Joseph is closely connected to the idea of knits—was blown up to maximized proportions, a technique that for the first time had been possible to achieve on a machine. Rugby shirts were rendered in classic fabrics, the most obviously luxurious one in black napa leather (this was Thomas' favorite piece of the collection). There were also some quirky touches, like the scarves that looked like sweaters, detachable pleated details on shirts, and luxury bum bags. The color scale was borrowed from the Irish-American painter Sean Scully, whose abstract panels were reinterpreted on various pieces, including a brown knitted tracksuit.Pitting tailoring and sportswear against one another is nothing new in menswear, but there was an accentuated looseness to this collection that you don't usually see when designers work this contrast. The pants were slouchy to the point where you wondered if they would actually look good on your average guy. Summing up the collection, Thomas said: "It's like he has borrowed clothes from some older relative's wardrobe, and the clothes don't fit perfectly, but that's where their beauty lies."
11 January 2015
"Where do men and women meet?" Obvious! In 2015, the answer to Louise Trotter's question must surely be: "On Tinder." More abstractly, though, the sexes now increasingly swirl, ferment, then inter-impregnate via the medium of fashion. This Joseph collection for Pre-Fall represents an advanced attack on the gender barrier spearheaded by Trotter, who has been at the label's helm since 2009. Yes, the colors and the stripes on the fetching fur snoods-cum-scarves were informed by the art of Sean Scully. But the silhouettes, the codes, and the essence of this collection are all about menswear, pure and simple. Just look at the military-touched jackets, the revere-stripped DB overcoats, the single-pleat pants…halfway through the presentation this reporter couldn't help noting, "She's pinching our clothes."Trotter, diplomatically, calls it "borrowed" and has interesting things to say about the refraction that now so closely pulses between the genders. Joseph is three seasons into its own menswear line, and the designer rightly observes that the hairier human has a "narrower but deeper" dialect of clothing to enunciate. Translated via Trotter to womenswear, this XX-chromosome collection took masculine staples and then messed mercilessly with them: an old-school dressing gown was turned into an overcoat; lumbering jumbo cords became chic culottes; Aran knit was applied to trousers (why has no one done that before?); and yarns were turned inside out. Trotter says she has focused so closely on menswear because "for me, right now, that is the way I want to dress. And it also reflects how I am seeing fashion now; I want to have pieces that have more longevity."There is real character in this collection, which deftly sublimates menswear archetypes to reveal raw shadows of reveres past. Strip down the pomp and circumstance of menswear and you are left with clothes that are comfortable, elegant, and easy to move in—surely the essence of it. As Trotter says: "It's not that we're anti-fashion, but you want clothes that last. I want them to be pieces that you cherish, you love, you continue to wear, and you continue to add into your wardrobe. I want things that have meaning." Amen to that, whatever your gender.
7 January 2015
"Contrast," commented Joseph creative director Louise Trotter, "has always been a big theme for me." This season, she went on to say, she was really pushing the opposites—East versus West, tranquility versus energy, rawness versus refinement. The yin/yang of it all was apposite, given that Joseph is a brand that has sometimes seemed in the midst of an identity crisis. Is it a much-beloved multibrand shop with a house label that trades in elevated staples that help fill in the blanks of a designer wardrobe? Or is it a luxury fashion brand with a directional identity all its own? Joseph seems to want it both ways. No surprise, the brand has had mixed success with its more directional silhouettes, even as it reliably turns out excellent versions of the kinds of clothes it's known for—knits, leathers, top-notch outerwear, fantastic pants, and slick menswear-inspired tailoring.That's plenty to get right, but Trotter et al. seem determined to push. This time out, they came close to having their cake and eating it too with a collection that mixed Japanese themes and sporty Anglo ones. Trotter said she was focused on "naive, post-technical" materials this season, and the coarse silks and linens, selvedge denim, and plonge leather used throughout the collection gave it an appealing sense of hand. There was also a lovely artlessness to the loopy knits, as well as the lace and organza skirts with razored, unfinished hems. The more restrained the silhouettes, the more the grace of the materials and the details emerged. A collection highlight, for instance, was the super-simple plonge leather tank dress worn by Sam Rollinson, which exemplified the less-was-more rule here. There were also some great denim pieces, a touch confused by the styling, and the knits and the sheer shirting popped, too. On the other hand, the sculpted sleeves were rather mannered, and the oversizing often came off slack. In the end, though, the show was convincing—you wanted to buy into the attitude. And that, of course, was the point.
13 September 2014
The skinheads and mods that informed Mark Thomas' debut last season as Joseph's first menswear designer gave way to Bruce Davidson'sBrooklyn Gangfor Spring. Injecting youth culture into a brand that is well past adolescence—both in actual age and ideology—is a risky strategy that requires a deft touch. Fortunately, Thomas seems to understand where "boy" ends and "man" begins. The presentation unfolded in Joseph's compact Brook Street store: In the front, seven models stood on squat white plinths; in back, there was a film shot in Brooklyn by Raf Stahelin. In both formats, the pairing of leather and knits—whether as T-shirt and knit city shorts or the inverse—stood out for its textural contrast. If the knit shorts sound like a tough sell for guys, they could reasonably make the leap to womenswear. Thomas took one pants pattern—relaxed fit, double pleat—and showed it in two fabrics to compare and contrast how the rayon silk collapses for maximum slouch and a stiff cotton keeps its volume. It's the same reason he settled on dropped shoulders and kimono sleeves almost exclusively—because an immersion into Joseph culture has quickly taught the former Givenchy and Neil Barrett designer that silhouette matters more than surface detail.Color, meanwhile, was elemental to the collection's youthfulness; the peachy orange was inspired by the coral linings of vintage bomber jackets. The Harrington jacket and high-neck baseball jersey (surely one of the season's surprise trends) were subtle nods back, too—each time interpreted without nostalgia. Finally, Thomas' suiting proposal—a military shirt and generous trousers framed with an unstructured jacket—acknowledged that classic tailoring is not the only option for men (of any age) today. Cross-generational appeal is an underrated achievement.
16 June 2014
To reconcile her general dislike for paisley, Joseph's Louise Trotter needed to address it her way. By redrawing and redistributing the decorative droplets, she gave them more room to breathe so their inclusion as her Resort collection's main motif would not fight with the overall mood of polished nonchalance. Top the paisley with a Teddy Boy coat, for instance, and the obvious pajama reference immediately becomes less pronounced.Joseph may not have a definable identity the way it did two decades ago, but that doesn't mean the brand has lost its way. If anything, Trotter used this offering to emphasize Joseph's strength as a go-to label for well-made, current, key pieces that will make fast friends with the rest of a woman's wardrobe. The most confident examples: a black jacquard parka that cinches around the hood so that it doubles as a ruffled collar, a sleek tuxedo with trousers lean yet forgiving, and a white jumpsuit with a deep V down the front filled in by gauzy organza. The satiny coral tracksuit, echoing the men's collection, was confident, too—it will also be more challenging to wear.Thanks to the Resort delivery time, the Joseph woman will be shopping for one of the several stacked sandal styles around the same time that the Joseph man will be buying his. Couples can even choose his-and-her cream sweaters. The same cannot be said of the knit shorts; where his are knee-length, hers are knickers.
16 June 2014
This year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of the opening of the Joseph store in South Kensington, London. In celebration of that fact, the stalwart London brand decided to throw itself a fashion show this season, and while under the spotlight the collection came off more retail-friendly than runway-ready, it did serve as a useful reminder of Joseph's place in the London fashion scheme of things. The collection included some very good new takes on the Joseph staples—knits and outerwear particularly. Creative director Louise Trotter made a convincing case for cozy sweater dressing, and there were a handful of top-notch jackets, such as the shearling-lined motorcycle jacket in a wine-colored check. Elsewhere, tie-neck blouses, naval-inspired trousers, and long skirts in dot chiffon all made a positive impression. Results were more mixed in terms of the leathers: Some all-leather looks came off heavy, though a leather jacket trimmed with long fringe will certainly find a lot of fans when it hits the shop floor.
14 February 2014
"If I'm going to design a peacoat," said Joseph's newly minted menswear designer, Mark Thomas, ex- of Givenchy and Neil Barrett, "then it has to be the best around. After all, the shop purchases so many other brands' collections, mine has to stand out from the rest." For the non-U.K.-based, here's a bit of a tutorial: Joseph is one of London's iconic multibrand shops, known for its fierce edit of top designers and for its eponymous in-house women's and menswear collections. For the first time in its forty-year history, the company has hired a head of design for the men's collection, and Thomas was tapped. And for his inaugural collection, called "The Iconics," he had a simple goal: To remind customers of the brand's DNA of luxury. To do that, he worked with three themes (black/white, masculine/feminine, and Anglo/Franco) and four wardrobe mainstays (the peacoat, the jean jacket, the parka, and the jean)."I wanted to combine London youth culture of skinheads and mods with an elegant, sophisticated French aesthetic," Thomas said. "My guiding lights were fabric, cut, and fit." To prove his point, Thomas created a luxurious double-face cashmere cargo jacket—effectively kicking the ordinary khaki parka to the curb. The "jean" jacket was not denim at all, but a butter-soft calfskin, while a slightly menacing "donkey jacket" had bonded leather in the back. "The donkey jacket," Thomas explained, "used to be worn by garbage men—the leather was to protect their coat when they slung the garbage bags around their shoulders." A Prince of Wales checked suit had skewed patterns, adding interest to an otherwise classic pattern. Shorter pant lengths, meanwhile, were evocative of the Thatcher-era skinheads. The collection's standout piece was a wool bomber jacket with the subtle buffalo check.
8 January 2014
News flash: The nineties are back. Joseph was way ahead on that trend, and now that the zeitgeist is fully on board, the British retailer has obliged by turning out a crisp and sporty collection for its house label that leans hard, but not too hard, on the look of the era. Long slipdress? Check. Shower slides? Check. Bright orange parka? Check. (And extra checks and gold stars for the version in ultra-supple kangaroo.) There were also trousers with gargantuan cuffs, kilts, cool looks in sheer or silver foil cellophane silk, and knits with graphic shapes screen-printed onto them graffiti-style. Very tomboyish, overall. The standouts here, though, were the pieces in worked leather, like a sleeveless leather button-down laser-cut in a floral motif and a bomber lined with sponge for textural effect. Both of these pieces had the accessible, versatile feel of basics while not being basic at all. That's the Joseph sweet spot.
9 October 2013
Joseph gave itself a bit of a reboot this season. In its previous few collections, the brand had drifted into relatively editorial territory, and though some of its propositions were very interesting, the collections as a whole proved a bit digressive. Here, Joseph put itself back on track, reinvesting in its mission to create well-executed staple pieces that the Joseph shopper can mix easily into her luxury wardrobe. Designer Louise Trotter is very good at making her staples look relevant; this season, she updated the signature Joseph coats, knits, and trousers by giving them that oh-so-prevalent sculpturally slouchy shape. The graphic sweaters looked very sharp, as did some of the more outré pieces, like a chevron-patterned sheepskin coat in black and white, and the T-shirt and track pants in a tiger-stripe suede dévoré. But it was the garments with a more taut tailoring that looked the freshest. Women will have a lot of places to go for voluminous coats and trousers next season, but if they're in the market for a trim overcoat in laminated gold wool, or a pair of slender pin-striped pants, then they will be very pleased to find those looks at Joseph. And the standout piece here was as staple as it gets: a nearly weightless baby lambskin jacket in cream, with black leather trim. It's hard to imagine that jacket ever going out of style. Which, this collection reminded you, was always Joseph's point.
13 March 2013
Eclecticism in fashion is a slippery slope. Hit just right, it works, but past a certain threshold, it becomes a mess. The new Joseph collection stood right astride that blurry line.The range was inspired by the work of stylist Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele and her influential mix-and-match, piled-on, high-and-low approach to fashion. With that in mind, designer Louise Trotter ginned up an assortment of usual suspect references: Chanel bouclé, preppy English check, polka dots, punkish studs and motorcycle jackets, and, predominantly, military and nautical apparel, both of which were quoted very directly. And all that was thrown in the blender with Joseph-trademark looks such as sporty track pants and fluid shirting.The problem here wasn't the grab bag of references. And within each of her themes, Trotter conjured up lots of strong pieces that ought to kill on the sales floor. But there wasn't a clear, overarching look to this collection, and the individually appealing items were buried under layering. Ultimately, the eclecticism felt forced.
18 September 2012
Joseph's grunge-inspired Resort collection came out of pretty much nowhere to become a blockbuster for the brand: Those checks and diaphanous florals have been in stores for a while now, and the demand for them shows no signs of abating. The Joseph collection for Fall seems to have been designed using the same formula that made Resort such a winner: In place of the grunge toughness, there were biker leathers and a military inflection; rather than the feminizing florals, there were ruffles and lace. And as always with Joseph, the collection was studded with top-notch knits and the kind of coats and jackets you wear to the point of disintegration.One of the fresh ideas that designer Louise Trotter introduced this season was sweater dressing: The collection was full of ribbed tops, dresses, and skirts that were made to be layered. Another new element was ponyskin, which looked particularly good in a muted leopard print used in coats, pencil skirts, and bags. Elsewhere, Trotter traded in the punchy, Joseph-signature intarsia handknits for Peruvian-inspired ponchos and fringed sweaters with a more muted charm. All in all, this was a collection well stocked with knockout pieces—curly coats and camo fur, zigzagged angora-blend turtlenecks, ruffled dresses, and track pants in a soft gray lace-printed silk—that were delivered with the typical Joseph understatement. But this time, when the collection starts flying out of stores, no one is going to be surprised.
20 February 2012
Consistent excellence can be kind of a bore. Oh, Kate Winslet delivered a great performance? Shocker. What, Michael Lewis is publishing yetanotherbook that will make you like reading about things you don't care about? Well, duh. Insert your own example of tiresomely predictable terrificness here.The danger reviewing Joseph's collections, at least since the brand has been under the creative supervision of Louise Trotter, is that you're tempted to hunt for negative things to say, just to keep things interesting. Well, here goes: This season's collection, which riffs on military garb and old Katharine Hamnett, isn't quite the tour de force that Joseph's Resort collection was. It's a shame to see the brand back away from print, for one thing; on the other hand, Trotter's decision to emphasize neutrals now puts Joseph in fine, one-step-ahead company, alongside The Row and Givenchy. Not much of a complaint, really.Better just to give up and acknowledge what's good here: slick, lightweight parkas with neon piping, kimono-tied military-style tunics and shirtdresses, a chic evening jumpsuit with a wave of silk floating off the collar. And also, typically, lots of no-brainer shirts and trousers with modern, sporty silhouettes and a dressed-up mien. On-target business as usual, in other words.
11 October 2011
What was nineties style? Depends who you ask. For some women, the nineties were defined by Helmut Lang. Other gals will conjure the luxe and lean era of Tom Ford at Gucci; still others will tell you the nineties were all about grunge. All the aforementioned—Helmut, Tom, Kurt 'n' Courtney—have entered fashion's rehash cycle. But it's hard to think of a nineties-referencing collection that has felt more personal, and more specific, than the one shown for Resort '12 by Joseph.For Joseph creative director Louise Trotter, the nineties were about what was happening mid-to-late-decade around London's Portobello Market. There was some grunge to the look—those unavoidable Washington State flannels—but it had been Anglicized, the lumberjack plaids traded in for Highland checks. And instead of baby-doll dresses, the thing on Portobello was vintage thirties-era slips or the bias-cut crepe dresses proffered around the corner at Ghost. Mix in a pair of cargo pants, a peacoat or parka one or two sizes too large, sundry knits, and a pair of trainers or combat boots, and voilà! You, my friend, were identifiably a member of the Big Beat-listening,Cheap Date-reading, Ladbroke Grove-loitering British Youth Culture. If that sounds ghastly, well, it often was.The really remarkable thing about Joseph's Resort collection, though, is that it ticks all those boxes and yet doesn't look ghastly at all. Seeing these clothes is a bit like opening your high school yearbook to discover—very happily—that someone has gone to the trouble of retouching every photo of you. Well done! Rather than an ill-fitting kilt from Scotland's deadstock, Joseph offers a longish, knife-pleated skirt or better yet, a clingy check dress in stretch wool. In place of those vintage chemises—invariably missing a button somewhere and shredded at the seams—there are floor-length slipdresses in couture-quality silk and dainty floral tea dresses. Slouchy, nicely tapered cargo pants and tracksuit-style trousers fill in for those better-off-forgotten Maharishis. And so on.The whole aesthetic has been given an upgrade, and the silhouettes feel modern. Atypically for Joseph, this is a print-driven collection—Trotter and her team have devised a number of winning florals, intended to be mixed with the checks.
Very typically, some of the standout pieces are outerwear—notably, the jacket and coat in subdued check with exposed shearling lining, and the mid-weight anorak in slick, bonded viscose, with its oversize hood and pouf sleeves. Those pieces will last in your wardrobe well after the frenzy for the nineties has passed.
15 June 2011
You can only keep a good secret for so long. Four seasons ago Louise Trotter quietly took over as the creative director of Joseph, and since then fashion insiders have been snapping up the London-based brand's clothes. There hasn't been a buzz around Joseph so much as a powerful kind of silent acknowledgment—spy a woman wearing a pair of the clever Spring 2011 trousers riffing on workout pants, or one of Fall 2010's paradigmatically good, oversize Shetland sweaters, and you'd just nod your head and think, "Joseph." Those moments have been coming fast and furious lately: The secret's out.As the latest Joseph collection affirms, Trotter isn't up to anything revolutionary, she's just making lots of winning pieces, ones that wink at current trends without being held captive by them. To wit, the new color-blocked mohair sweaters, timely yet evergreen, or the hooded shearling jacket detailed with grommets, which is distinctive enough to feel special, and hard to imagine going out of style. Trousers, as longtime Joseph fans recall, are a traditional strength of this brand, and the Fall collection serves up a few new closet staples, such as a wrapped silk harem pant and a wool trouser with a zip-over waist, as well as new iterations of the instant-classic workout pant introduced last season. Trotter and her team have also made a habit of combing the Joseph archive for signature knits; this season they've pulled out an eighties-era tiger intarsia and used it in an extra-long scarf, knit leggings, and a seriously cozy oversize sweater. Those tiger knits are about as loud as anything gets in this detail-driven collection, but one by one the pieces are never boring.
18 February 2011