Dion Lee (Q2934)
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Dion Lee is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Dion Lee |
Dion Lee is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
“Was this the highest fashion show ever done in Shanghai?,” guests wondered as they walked into Dion Lee’s fall 2024 show. The semi-surprise (more on that later) presentation was hosted on the 100th floor of the Shanghai Financial Center, one of the tallest buildings in China.After celebrating a decade of showing at New York Fashion Week, Lee wanted to break the rhythm of the high-octane, bigger and louder shows that we had come to expect from him. The original plan was to show the collection in New York in a more intimate setting; perhaps at the space of his future store on Mercer street, which has been at a standstill because of logistical difficulties. “But the end of last year was so congested and busy that the reality of focusing on something like this [a show] for February, right after Christmas, was unrealistic,” said Lee. Just in that month of December, he celebrated a store opening in Miami during Art Basel, then unveiled a new Australian flagship in Melbourne. “Something had to give,” he added. With ten years under his belt, he said, also came the confidence to skip a NYFW season and look elsewhere.Lee has cemented himself as one of Australia’s most successful fashion exports, and his presence stateside is undeniable (see Taylor Swift in one of his knit corsets at the Super Bowl). The designer had planned a trip to China in 2020 to meet his buyers and retailers, but it got scrapped in the onset of the pandemic; with the launch of a Lunar New Year capsule in Shanghai earlier this year came the idea of revisiting that plan and activating in the city. Although many Western brands are keen to make themselves felt in China with a myriad events ranging from parties to exhibitions; Lee wanted to make a mark rather than become a footnote in a busy season.And so just as golden hour struck, Lee’s star and fire motifs of the season shot across the sky as models crossed the all-glass observatory, framed by a panoramic view of Shanghai’s breathtaking skyline. Placing such celestial elements against the sky was pure serendipity, but that’s about all Lee left to chance here. This was a well-edited and precise outing for the designer.As usual, Lee riffed on a singular concept this season—the flame—and rendered it in an abundance of compelling fabrications. “It’s a symbol of creation and destruction,” Lee explained, adding he had considered the flame for both its beauty and treacherous ways.
The collection began with a star-shaped criss-cross lapel, then moved into interpretations of the flame motif; printed on grungy tie-dye dresses, woven into intricate laces (one of which was meticulously beaded), and distressed on loose-fitting jeans. Lee dyed lucious faux fur coats—one of his models looked like a literal fireball on the runway—and embossed flames on his leather jackets and on the padded protective gear he employed as armor detailing to contrast his otherwise gossamer silhouettes.Lee’s show was off-schedule and had gone unannounced until just early this week. There was no ulterior motive for the secrecy other than Lee and his team being heads-down to pull the feat off. Needless to say they did. There was equal parts excitement and curiosity in his crowd, many of which donned outfits by the brand. The city looks good in head-to-toe Dion Lee, and Shanghai certainly looks good on Lee, too.
1 April 2024
“Put a wrench in it!” So said my seatmate as the third look walked down the runway at Dion Lee’s spring 2024 show.The white button-down-and-bodysuit hybrid had wrenches on top of the boning that shaped its corseted torso. That same model wore thigh-high boots with integrated tool belts. The look prior was a tailored jacket with its seams slashed to hold another belt in lieu of pockets, and the show’s opener consisted of a tailored jacket worn over a white shirt with metal bars placed over two of its seams. You surely know the drill by now: Officewear, tools…we could call it workwear had the name not already been claimed.Lee stretched this theme to a surprisingly vast range of hardware-clad interpretations. “This season was primarily about evolving the utility and construction language I’ve been playing with until now,” he said at a preview, mentioning the scaffolding and industrial design in his Melbourne and Miami stores and the utilitarian detailing he’s explored of late. What’s compelling about Lee as a designer is his ability to both fixate—and cleverly expand on—a specific theme while managing to keep his clothes distinctlyhis.Lee said he started playing with power cords as a way to drape for his fall campaign, which carried over into this collection in the shape of shirring details by way of bungee cords. Particularly fun was a pair of trousers that had its back label replaced with an outlet; the model walked down the runway plugged in, carrying his coiled orange cord as a shoulder bag. The designer also used screwheads in lieu of studs across, turned suede work boots into tiny corsets, applied lacing detail to bottoms, and draped beautifully airy dresses, some with pin-tuck details around jewelry in the shape of screws. A piece he particularly nailed was the closing look, a crepe frock draped and ruched around an anatomically shaped structure at the abdomen. What the dress looks and feels like while sitting down is the real question, but it’s not the kind of dress you wear to sit down in anyway.Elsewhere, Lee laminated denim and introduced foiled leather for a sleek hint of texture. The latter was used in bubble-hem skirts and dresses, which added a welcome variation of shape—these felt new for Lee, and it would be interesting to see him continue to explore working away from the body moving forward. (Speaking of the body, there were a few appreciated expansions in sizing in Lee’s casting.
) Also cool were his lace lingerie-like explorations; they felt freshest where they fell weightless around the body rather than constrict it.Another development: Lee stepped away from his usual monochromatic palette and strict category groupings to “mix things in a bit more.” The goal, he said, was to offer an “exaggerated brand wardrobe.” That is the operative word here,wardrobe—the truth is that it’s become reductive to label Lee’s clothes as nothing other than rave-ready. That they are, and they will continue to be, but he also gave his customers options past a night out. Dion Lee has a few more tools in his toolbox.
10 September 2023
There’s an unspoken rule not to show up to a party at its start time. That should’ve been the approach to Dion Lee’s high-octane runway show at an empty loft in downtown Manhattan last night. It started 50 minutes late.Lee and his clothes are well known in New York’s party circles, and for good reason—the Australian designer has found quite the niche making what is practically luxury rave wear. His fall collection read like the climax of this idea. Lee has an exacting eye for sexiness, his cut is precise and more often than not reveals just enough of his subject’s body. This season’s slinky dresses, barely-there tank tops, mini skirts, and cropped tops flexed this muscle, but not fatigue; Lee seems heedful of the balance between revealing too much and just enough. A full wardrobe rather than simply “going out” staples, the collection was slightly more refined and grown-up, without losing the identity that has made Lee a celebrity and cool-person favorite (Julia Fox and Ice Spice sat front row, as did some other popular influencers and fashionable party folks).The crux of the collection was Lee’s material exploration of a repeated reptilian motif. Day one of New York Fashion Week was big for animals: Collina Strada dressed her models in photo-realistic fur prints and transformed their faces with whimsical creature prosthetics, Prabal Gurung supersized butterfly wings as prints, and Lee fixated on serpent scale patterns, as “representation of the shedding of skin,” he said backstage. It is not unusual for Lee to find inspiration in nature and merge it with his industrial designs (for spring 2023, he found convergence between monstera leaf patterns and classic motocross lines). He has a flair for materialization, but the laser focus on a single motif this season saw him test this potential to the fullest.“There is a parallel with identity and always changing and evolving as a person and designer,” he said. “But, really, I think I’m focused on how plants and reptiles shed their skin, and that as a visual in itself.” He translated the concept into rhombus-shaped eyelet belting and surface treatments, wide-gauge knits and mixed-gauge mesh, peeling rubber, distressed ball chain applied over silk georgette dresses (a technical wonder), shaved shearling (a crowd favorite), and Japanese shibori dyeing (a personal favorite). These made a solid pairing with Lee’s party-ready silhouettes.
Elsewhere, he doubled-down on his outerwear offering with potent shearling styles, puffer jackets cut in corset-like shapes, and translucent inflatable jackets, reducing his tailoring to a handful of sharp-edged wide-shouldered jackets. Denim came distressed, a technique he also explored with ripped hosiery dresses and tops that were the beginning of an interesting idea, particularly in menswear, but one that could have used refinement. One compelling proposal Lee could explore further is his application of boning in horizontal stacks to create drape and structure.Once the show ended, the crowd seemed eager to move on to the designer’s after party, which featured rapper Azaelia Banks. The show might have taken much longer than expected to start, but usually so does a good party.
11 February 2023
The scene at Dion Lee today was like a look book by the New York–based Australian designer come to life. In the space—an empty floor in a Hudson Yards building with a breathtaking view of the city’s skyline—a lineup of influencers, models, and more stood around in full looks by the brand. All tall, slender, and muscular. All very cool. All, of course, very Dion Lee.The label’s offering usually teeters between day and night. Its knits and cargos feel both rave ready and casual enough to wear during the day, while its miniskirts, leather separates, and dresses feel dressed up enough for an evening out—perfect for a day-to-night-to-day lifestyle. But for spring Lee expanded on both ends of the spectrum. His very chic and well-cut tailoring and denim (in a just-right, grayed-out wash) offered a more dressed-up daywear assortment, while his floor-length slinky knit dresses and skirts and metallic fringe separates introduced a true evening selection.Backstage after the show, Lee pointed out that this season he honed his interest in patterns of anatomy. “I like to place things on the body in a way that relates to the structure of our form,” he said in reference to his cutouts and layering. This is something Lee does extremely well. He understands the human shape, particularly the muscular and slender type he prioritizes in casting, and knows precisely what areas of the body to uncover or enhance. His clothes are incredibly sexy; they’re alluring and exact, aggressive but curiously inviting. It would be interesting to see him build around other body types, as one often sees his clothes out in the city, and they tend to adapt well to different shapes.Lee also experimented with moto language over the summer. (Perhaps a nod to Rosalía’sMotomami? He outfitted her tour.) These padded and more industrial fabrications worked surprisingly well with his recurring monstera leaf motif, which now bleeds past tops and dresses into footwear and handbags. He said he looked to establish a relationship between nature and what he sees in his daily city life. The designer also introduced a scuba capsule, the bodysuit of which wouldn’t look out of place in a club—it’s Dion Lee, after all.
10 September 2022
Thousands of cell phones are thrust into the air as the opening din of Rosalía’s “Saoko” begins. The stage is bare but the zillions of fans know that soon, the lights will flash and there will come Rosalía, in the first moment of the first night of her 2022 world tour that will take her from her native Spain across Europe and to North and South America. When she finally appears, in a blitz of light and cheers, she’s wearing a cobalt Dion Lee knit top and low-waisted miniskirt that is positively mini—all the better to show off her Dion Lee boots.Weeks before, in Paris, Lee is scrolling through dozens of sketches he has made for Rosalía and all of her dancers. He will be the exclusive costumer for the musician for the next four months of her tour, crafting every belt, every moto jacket, and every flamenco-inspired gown. He doesn’t seem a lick tired, instead inspired to see his designs take life on a star of Rosalía’s stature.That partnership suits him. His woman is really the Rosalía type—aggressive, tough, and spellbindingly sexy. His resort 2023 collection, concepted in tandem with Rosalía’s looks, is brimming with ruggedly hot clothing with a certain motocross edge. The monstera leaf top from his spring 2021 collection has been revived as a padded black leather minidress that almost resembles a tire tread. Shoulder pads and knee pads give sunbleached sweats a sporty feeling, while deconstructed corset suiting is as strict as ever, but somehow in our strange intra-pandemic world, feels totally right.Maybe it’s that after all the hubbub about dressing up or dressing down, hardcore crispness is the mood that fits this moment. Precision and slinkiness can be at odds, but here Lee finds a groove that works. Catch it on tour this fall—or in wardrobes this resort season.
12 July 2022
Dion Lee has been building stores in New York and Miami during the pandemic, and the construction work bled into his collection. It’s a natural parallel for Lee, who has been fascinated with tailoring and architectural shapes since his earliest collections back in Australia. This season, he’s pushed modularity to the fore. Hunched-forward sleeves can be removed from jackets and tops via hook-and-eye fastenings. Micro-micro-microminiskirts come with carpenter pockets. Blazers have fastenings at front and back so they can be re-pinned throughout the day. The brand’s popular braided knit dresses are back, now with even more holes and slits so they can transform into tanks or halters with ease.With their multi-wear potential, Lee’s clothes look more suited for real life than ever before. But whose real life, exactly? Even his most essential, basic pieces radiate sexual tension. His fans seem to love it—the women in his Brooklyn audience challenged some on the catwalk for the shortest skirt. But what Lee could maybe benefit from is a little more grit and a little less polish. The cargo pants he wore for his finale had a patina about them that his very cool nylon versions may never wear into. Well, depends on how hard you party.
15 February 2022
This July, Dion Lee will open his first North American store in New York’s Soho. The 4,000-square-foot spot will be his first outpost outside of Australia, introducing Manhattanites to the full range of his offering. “I feel like I am still unknown in America,” he says. “Fashion people know me, but …” he trails off.It seems crazy that Lee doesn’t have a larger audience. His second-skin sexiness has found fans across the celebrity sphere and on the hot girls and guys that haunt our physical and digital spaces. Ariana Grande wears his corset in her “Positions” music video, Jacob Elordi sports one on a magazine cover, and every single friend you have probably has one in their cart on Ssense.It’s Lee’s knowledge of the customers he does have that has kept his business in growth mode during the pandemic. In Australia, where he has eight stores, sales are reportedly booming. Same for his e-commerce, where his ribbed knits and slinky dresses fly off the virtual racks. For fall 2021, he’s elaborated on his architectural and body conscious subversions, cutting prepster V-neck knits into harnesses, placing equestrian-inspired bits into a belt, and slicing into knit dresses and tops like a sensual surgeon. One of his more ingenious ideas this season is a tweak of the Y-front underpants that inspired layered ribbed cashmere bodysuits worn by male and female models. Very sexy and very singular.Elsewhere, he is stretching out his denim offering, finding ways to cut corsetry into the material, and expanding his outerwear. The collection’s luxe shearling coats and boots, the latter made in partnership with the French company Both Footwear, reflect how Lee dresses in his own life: comfortably casual with a great coat and shoes. His surefootedness with his own personal style has no doubt helped him chart his course in fashion. The more Dion Lee’s collection looks like Dion Lee’s closet, the better it is. American customers are about to take note.
8 April 2021
Dion Lee has been on a sexy streak since 2018 or so, finding ways to fuse his architecturally minded clothing with a provocative body consciousness. His square-neck jersey corset tops have been a retail hit, as have his cutaway dresses, worn by the likes of Gigi Hadid and Gwyneth Paltrow. For spring 2021, for the first time in a long time, Lee is softening up his geometric take on sex appeal in favor of an organic reflection of nature’s curves.His biophilic collection was inspired by New York City’s designation as a tropical climate—the result of global warming. Anyone who buckled down in NYC through the pandemic’s first wave knows that the humidity is unmatched, and so in a Bushwick warehouse, Lee and friends set up a veritable greenhouse filled with his green, leafy clothing. The most literal homage to flora is a molded leather top inspired by a Monstera leaf. He’s testing out new experiments with knotting and macramé too, tying up dresses and trousers for a look that feels very aughts—and very now. The knee-high macramé boots are codesigned by Lee with Fashion, the model and designer who closed his last show.Elsewhere he has developed an ikat camouflage print that feels a little heavy compared with other pieces that cling and wrap around the body. Lee’s at his best when he leans into the more provocative parts of his oeuvre. In these weird times, something both snuggly and sexy has a lot of appeal.
19 October 2020
Dion Lee has been on a sexy streak since 2018 or so, finding ways to fuse his architecturally minded clothing with a provocative body consciousness. His square-neck jersey corset tops have been a retail hit, as have his cutaway dresses, worn by the likes of Gigi Hadid and Gwyneth Paltrow. For spring 2021, for the first time in a long time, Lee is softening up his geometric take on sex appeal in favor of an organic reflection of nature’s curves.His biophilic collection was inspired by New York City’s designation as a tropical climate—the result of global warming. Anyone who buckled down in NYC through the pandemic’s first wave knows that the humidity is unmatched, and so in a Bushwick warehouse, Lee and friends set up a veritable greenhouse filled with his green, leafy clothing. The most literal homage to flora is a molded leather top inspired by a Monstera leaf. He’s testing out new experiments with knotting and macramé too, tying up dresses and trousers for a look that feels very aughts—and very now. The knee-high macramé boots are codesigned by Lee with Fashion, the model and designer who closed his last show.Elsewhere he has developed an ikat camouflage print that feels a little heavy compared with other pieces that cling and wrap around the body. Lee’s at his best when he leans into the more provocative parts of his oeuvre. In these weird times, something both snuggly and sexy has a lot of appeal.
19 October 2020
A model named Fashion closed the Dion Lee show. She slinked down the runway in a dazed strut, her white, bias-draped midiskirt suspended from her golden belly button ring. That was the most extreme example of jewelry integrating into Lee’s garments on the runway today, but also the one to elicit the most audible interest from the audience—and that’s saying a lot of the fall collection.The starting point was the fusion of jewelry and garment. A custom chain link that was developed in Lee’s studio allowed for him to hike up slits in skirts and lace through knit tops from wrist to wrist with a golden flourish. The success of his stretch jersey dresses and corsets—yes, you’ve seen Gigi Hadid, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Solange Knowles in them recently—inspired an expanded offering of second-skin tops and dresses, none more Hadid-worthy than an entirely backless gray number with chain detailing at the waist. That was a look that really did the most. For something that’s just doing a lot, see Lee’s ultralow-rise trousers. The most compelling pair hung from a belly chain; the most outrageous had cutouts at the hip bones to reveal a mock thong strap. This ultra-sexualized look continued through the use of fishnet, hook-and-eye closures, and knit furs. Lee’s material developments led him past jewelry and into dyeing, too, with shibori techniques used on jersey and leather.What made the collection look so compelling on the runway was its androgynous uniformity. Yes, Lee’s models were rail thin, but in that there was very little difference between body types. All genders wore all types of garment—and everybody looked smoking. That’s fashion, baby!
10 February 2020
A Dion Lee show has the potential to be very serious. The designer has incredibly highbrow, minimalist-hewing taste and works in a state of constant paring back—sleeker colors, more simplified lines, and more structural forms. So imagine how exciting it was when it was revealed that the pocket bustier that opened the show was actually two fully functional pockets, worn like two micro bags over a model’s bust. It was a rare bit of humor in Lee’s work, but it was reflective of a larger loosening up the designer has experienced since moving to New York last year. Sensuality is starting to displace structure in his collections, and for Spring 2020, he made strides toward an easier, more fluid version of Dion Lee.His starting point this season was lingerie and the way it highlights and reveals parts of the body. A shoulder harness—very reminiscent of a Helmut Lang version from the aughts—defined the erogenous zone of the collection, worn by male and female models. (Spring also served to welcome Lee’s menswear back to the catwalk.) His tight tanks have an instant appeal, as do his second-skin knits, the best of which was an olive green maxi dress with braiding around the waist and cuffs. For a rare experiment with color, print, and lightness, Lee channeled bandanas into halter tops and dresses in cherry red that, if the audience’s reactions were any indication, have plenty of real-world potential.But it would be a shame for fans to hone in only on his dresses. Perhaps it was the reintroduction of men’s, or maybe it was just a testament to our time, but Lee’s pants, shorts, and suiting have never looked better. Loose, slouchy, but still crisp, his white board-shorts suit and low-slung pants felt genderless, well cut, and very of-the-moment. So of-the-moment, in fact, that at least a dozen guests showed up to Lee’s rooftop show in this very uniform: white tank, black pants, sandals. Some were women, some were men, at least one was visibly pregnant. A tank-and-pants combo doesn’t seem like the most revelatory fashion proposition, but in the hands of a tailor as deft as Lee, it can be just the thing to amplify one’s daily wardrobe. Add his new see-now-buy-now bags and a pair of thongs and you’ll be well on your louche, sexy way.
12 September 2019
Structure is the ultimate driver forDion Lee. This season, he pared his formalism down to bare bones, using corsetry as a guiding principal. The opening corsets had a square neckline and long front, worn on their own with opera gloves or weaving in and out of shirting and blazers. From there Lee took the corset’s arches and placed them around the body, cutting knits in a collarbone swoop and building curved bralettes underneath sheer pieces. Towards the end of the show, fluid dresses and poet tops emerged with lace-up details, a nod to a corset’s lacing with a bit of romance.But Lee’s woman is not quite a romantic. The designer contrasted the delicate, almost prim corsetry with workwear elements. Carpenter trousers and low-slung black pants were cut so delectably slouchy they will be hard to resist in stores. Leather jackets and Lee’s first collection of architectural bags kept his grungy, subversive side alive, as did a lemon midi dress secured with silver piercings. That color, along with the abstract featherwork, could read downright Lang-ian, but Lee is wise enough to not fall prey to designer-reference traps. His collection swerved and bent, offering a range of emotions from polished to punkish. Set to Vivaldi’sSpring, it was a return to form for Lee, one that will keep his clientele busy all season long.
10 February 2019
Hard-edged ’90s sexiness is back in a big way. That might not be what Dion Lee was going for with his Spring collection—he spoke of ideas of privacy and voyeurism after the show—but it’s hard to argue against the naughty hotness of a little slinky, lacy thing. Here, there were bra tops, second-skin sheer turtlenecks, and a brilliant lace dress that gives way around the hips to turn into Lee’s signature netting. That netting was reimagined thinner and lighter on two dresses, one white, one black, made of 3-D printed latex that glittered under the runway lights—a rare moment of va-va-voom glamour on a Lee runway.Even if Lee’s clothes end up looking hot on his runways or on the perennially tan women in his front row, that’s seldom his intention. Obsessed with construction, he’s on a hunt for new ways to make clothing, and this season, he’s focused on building garments in halves. So those opening looks were actually an evolution: half a blazer, the whole thing, then the other half, stretched across three exits. In theory, it’s an interesting comment on fashion’s current vogue for hybridized garments, but in execution, the pieces had a clinical starkness. Lee’s best looks were the ones that mixed the science of his construction with an easy fluidity—see a series of dresses and a singular jumpsuit with hooks suspending the bottom halves to the tops. It was universally agreed in theVoguecar to the next show that that pin-stripe jumpsuit with hip-baring sides deserves a red carpet turn. Kristen Stewart, are you listening?
9 September 2018
You could read very deeply into Dion Lee’s two inspirations for Fall: lingerie and military. With Time’s Up and the #MeToo movement fueling conversations about consent and sex around the world, there is plenty to unpack in the image of model Lena Hardt wearing a fishnet bra-blazer hybrid. War clothes, too, touch on the instability of our political situation and the many conflicts, rebellions, and protests happening in America and around the globe.But Lee wasn’t thinking about the problems of the world, for better or for worse. Instead he said his starting point for the collection was a vintage flight suit that had utilitarian details seen in both military uniforms and in lingerie. At their core, both types of garment are about functionality, and that translated well on the runway. Most looks were extremely pared down, with a single design element, like the fusion of a brassiere into a top or the addition of a hammer loop to a straight-leg jean. Some models had leather harnesses and belts cinching them into fine sweaters and incredibly luxurious shearling coats, while others were slowly escaping from their garments, the tops of bomber jackets unbuttoned and folded over to make cushy little peplums, or an arm tucked out of a sweater sleeve so the fabric trailed behind like a banner in the breeze. The more you analyze these things, the weirder they seem, and yet on the catwalk they looked so very simple.For all the hybridization and deconstruction, the collection had no fuss about it. Every one of these collarbone-revealing knits seemed deceptively practical, every crisp trouser incredibly covetable, every boob-blazer somehow felt right. It helps Lee’s cause that the Bellas, Kendalls, and Kims have all adopted this business-bitch aesthetic—corsets, blazers, no pants at all—making some of Lee’s wilder propositions seem less than wild. The exception being a cyan dress with a bustier top and Lee’s signature netting starting exactly at hip level to reveal the model’s nude thong in the front and her bare derriere in the back. That was one unnecessary moment in an otherwise strong collection.But back to the inspirations for a second. You could surely fault Lee for not using his theme as a means to preach or protest, but considering how great the clothes looked, you’d be wasting your time. Instead, why not think about this: Lingerie and fetishwear, military detailing, and an extreme focus on function were three of the most visible references in Helmut Lang’s work.
As the Helmut Lang brand seeks its next seasonal collaborator, Lee should throw his name into the ring. It’s a big job, but if this show is any indication, he’d be equal to the task.
10 February 2018
It takes approximately 24 hours to get from New York to Sydney, Australia. To some, the trek would be considered hell, but clearly it’s become a creative godsend for Dion Lee. This season, instead of drawing inspiration from artistic references, which in the past has led him astray, Lee built his collection around his personal relationship with the relaxed beaches of Oz and the bustling streets of New York. It was a surf-to-city paradise of soft draping, exotic colors, and easy tailoring.Let’s review the highs. There was a stellar blazer-and-bike-shorts combo that opened the show and seemed particularly aimed at one of Lee’s earliest clients, Kim Kardashian West. Then came swooshy low-slung trousers with Möbius strip–like tops that slinked around the body with an unstudied sexiness. A pale blue knit look was made from a papery fiber that, while it looked like a towel, was actually much softer. That was followed by some electric pink and green numbers, faux denim, a little scuba romper, and a parade of Lee’s signature architectural cutting and slicing. Sure, those reverse mullet skirts could be a little tricky, but once Lena Hardt’s finale dress of bias navy pleating came out, little else mattered.Let’s not miss the details, too: Sculptural silver jewelry, clear sunglasses with logo croakies, and thongs filled out the offering alongside smart menswear that took suiting ideas and transposed them into casualwear. Stylists, editors, and shoppers take note: Lee’s in his groove.
9 September 2017
Thongs on the runway! No, no—not the bum-baring bottoms of Kendall Jenner or Bella Hadid. Today Dion Lee showedthongs—that’s Australian for flip-flops—at his Resort 2018 show. The thick-soled shoes were trimmed with elastic cable, giving them a sporty feel, and worn with everything from suiting to slip dresses. Turning the preferred footwear of Bondi bums into an accompaniment for a Prince of Wales blazer was just one of the ways Lee took classically Australian items and reworked them as smart fashion pieces, among them his own versions of R.M.Williams boots, Akubra hats, and nubbly beach towels.This return to Aussie form was inspired in part by Lee’s show location, the patio of the Sydney Opera House. At sunset, the space was framed by lavender storm clouds and rosy light, colors echoed in his collection, along with the ivory of the building’s tile. Showing in the shadows of such an iconic venue, he said, prompted a collection that represented his version of Australian essentials. For Lee, this is a marked shift. A formalist of sorts, he’s cited ideas as abstract as glass as the jumping off points for his sometimes overwrought collections. Not this time.Here, simplicity and a sunny ease were the prevailing spirit. Lee’s go-to cut-outs were stripped to their essentials, leaving a collarbone exposed or a strapless dress cut away to expose a hint of thigh. Suiting was easier than ever with a slight slouch in the trousers, though it’ll be hard to beat the appeal of Rachel Rutt, Australia’s homegrown hero of unstudied cool, in a coral red knit and bias skirt.
16 May 2017
Dion Leehad a lot of intelligent, interesting things to say about the collection he sent down the runway today. Speaking before his show this afternoon, Lee talked about the construction of jewelry chain, and how that had inspired the make of his showpiece textiles in this collection. He also discussed his desire to reconsider the functional elements in his garments and make them decorative. Lee was also interested in color, and being bold in his use of it, he said, before going on to mention other galvanizing ideas. It was, granted, a short conversation, but there was something essential missing from it: At no point did Lee mention why a woman would want to wear these particular clothes. What aspiration was he providing her? What feeling would these looks resonate with? What wardrobe void would they be filling?Designers are often better at speaking to craft than purpose. It’s no knock against Lee that he’s one who’d prefer to focus on process and artisanship than attitude or emotion. But this collection did seem to suffer from a lack of consideration of the end user—a problem that Lee doesn't seem to have when he presents his consumer-focused pre-collections, but that does sometimes dog him when he’s going for bigger effects on the runway. For all its pleasing passages, this was an outing that seemed a bit clinical in tone, and therefore didn’t achieve a sum greater than its well-wrought parts. Yes, the reinterpretation of functional elements as decoration was nicely done, with emphasized cargo pockets on military-inspired looks in black and a terracotta-toned nude, and exaggerating lacing and graphic hardware on some of the outerwear. True, the chain-like textile used in skirts and short dresses and as trim here and there was decidedly cool. And sure, the color did pop, notably the high-vis orange that showed up in a monochromatic knit tracksuit and as an element in Lee’s shaggy, intarsia camouflage sheepskin. But you never intuited a convincing answer to the unstated but all-important question: Why? Why these clothes, why these details, why now? Sartorially, if not verbally, a designer ought to be able to supply an answer.
12 February 2017
Straight up, this was a good-looking collection. This season, Dion Lee set to one side the formal ambition that typically characterizes his work and focused squarely on making desirable clothes. There was rigor in the details, to be sure, but these looks impressed mostly with their sensuousness, thanks to Lee’s emphasis on rich texture and color.As the designer explained at an appointment today, his starting point was outerwear: Pre-Fall is the one season where he concentrates on coats, he said, and thus he wanted to make the most of the opportunity. That he did. His bombers in bouclé or shearling were top-grade, sharply cut despite their oversizing. Curly wool accents added to the appeal. Elsewhere, Lee’s elegant wrap and slip dresses in silk velvet competed with the outerwear in their richness.Daywear found Lee playing with sporty elements—track striping, for instance—as well as military aesthetics less usual for him. One especially nice touch was the way he featured his military-inspired hardware through the collection, carrying it from lightweight parkas to unfussy evening looks in a substantial silk. It wasn’t a showy effect, just a bit of punctuation. The cozy bouclé-like knits and pieces in chenille demonstrated a similar sense of restraint, letting the texture do the talking. The clothes spoke quietly, but they made their point.
7 December 2016
Huzzah! This season,Dion Leemade it look easy. That’s saying something: Lee, despite the huge talent he’s demonstrated over the years, has often struggled to escape a certain quality of thinkiness in his clothes, such that his collections have often come off more as intellectual exercises than viable, woman-friendly wardrobes. Now, though, it seems Lee has begun to trust his own smarts, so much so that he was willing to rest his collection on a few simple ideas that he extrapolated not just well, but no more than necessary.There were a few key themes here. One was a riff on outerwear staples: the trench coat and the anorak. The trench exploration found Lee both magnifying certain elements of the piece, like the belt, and using the trench coat as a stylistic jumping-off point for other types of garments. In the case of the anorak, Lee was mainly playing with proportions, as with his nylon anoraks with long, parachute-like backs. In both cases, his experiments served to refresh the iconic.Two of Lee’s other core concepts closely interacted. He was thinking about light this season and the way it refracts, and with that in mind, he worked to create various kinds of reflection, using shiny fabrics or dappling others with sequins, or laying iridescent strips along garments to create something close to a trompe l’oeil pleated effect. That latter technique played into Lee’s experimentation with pleats—several of the looks here found him creating “pleats” that weren’t pleats at all, an innovation arrived at out of a desire for pleats’ graphic verticality, but a distaste for the weight and volume they can add to a garment. This was—yes—an intellectual exercise, but like nigh-on invisible couture stitches, the rigor served the purpose of disguising itself. These were, as you looked at them, merely great-looking clothes. Their appeal was that they seemed effortless.
11 September 2016
Dion Leecould give you a million guesses as to the starting point for his new collection, and you’d still never get it. Correction: Maybe at, say, guess 476,892, you’d offer up “glass,” having spied the glass beads crocheted into some of Lee’s evening looks. Years of your life would have gone by, hazarding guesses, and you’d wind up wishing you’d paid attention to the damn glass beads—a straightforward clue—right off the bat. So, yeah, anyway,glass. But that’s the great thing about Dion Lee: His mind works in unexpected, indeed unexpectable, ways.Aside from the beads, Lee abstracted his glass concept in a few different directions. His most inventive idea was to think about glass in terms of form, making garments of square sheets of material, like windowpanes, and then draping and pleating and cutting into the fabric to re-create, in three dimensions, the effect of reflection. The slashes and asymmetrical folds on numerous of Lee’s pieces did double-duty, thematically; of a blazer with cut-open sleeves, for instance, he explained that he was contemplating springtime, and playing with ways to make a tailored jacket jibe with that warming weather impulse to, in his words, “peel back the layers.” You could see a similar thinking at work in his fret-like lacing, a riff on the glass bead crochet. These were clothes with windows cracked to let in some air.The thing is, these clothes needed some air. There was a certain monumentality to Lee’s offer here, and though his instinct to introduce improvisational gestures was correct, the effect was too often mannered as opposed to spontaneous. Lee did loosen the reins as he considered his window theme from another perspective, glossing not the glass itself but its frame. That idea came through most clearly in two of the collection’s most dressed-down looks, navy crepe pieces crisply edged in white. A pair of trousers, vaguely redolent of athletic tear-away pants, made for one of the standout pieces here, if only because their fluid silhouette made for a nice counterpoint to the showier sculptural clothes. This was one of those Dion Lee collections where the designer’s concept—and the formal play it inspired—had a somewhat stifling effect. You’d imagine a glass-inspired collection would be all about lightness, and in some ways, this one was. The palette, for instance, erred for the most part toward the bleached end of the spectrum.
But too often here, the light was a grace note that served to underscore this collection’s sense of weight.
7 June 2016
Opinions differ on what makes someone “a real New Yorker”—years of residence? Familiarity with the JMZ train? Method of pizza eating?—but fashion-wise, Dion Lee passed the critical test this season. Sydney-based Lee has been showing in New York for a few years now, but this was the collection that found him making his peace, at last, with sportswear. It’s not that Lee hasn’t made dresses and separates suitable for everyday wear before now; it’s just that his previous efforts came off deeply ambivalent. He resisted the category as much as he embraced it. With his show this morning, though, Lee came of age as a New York designer, offering a take on the local fashion specialty that was approachable yet sophisticated and distinctive.If Lee’s main focus this season was on making direct clothes—and indeed, that seemed to be the case—he got at directness by way of a handful of abstract ideas. One was to construct clothes such that they seemed to float away from the body, an idea Lee had explored in hisPre-Fall collection, but elaborated in new ways here, particularly in his range of sculptural tailoring. Another key idea was to make clothes appear backlit—hence the motifs of perforation and crystal dappled onto material or bonded into it. The most intriguing of Lee’s ideas, however, was his play with hardware. Speaking after the show, he explained that he wanted to probe the tension between functional detail and ornamental detail, an inquiry he pursued by creating hoop-shaped silver jewelry of varying size that pierced numerous garments. In some cases, as with the collection’s hands-down standout item, a boiled merino wool coat, the silver hoops served to pinch the coat’s volume, gathering the material up into sharp pleats. In other cases, the hoop was strictly ornamental—although, as Lee’s hoop-punctuated take on the cold-shoulder top demonstrated, a little canny ornamentation can go a long way.For all the heady notions informing it, this really was a very grounded collection. Lee could continue to simplify his approach, and focus even more on making brass tacks, wardrobe-friendly sportswear, without losing the sense of intellect in his clothes. His intelligence will always shine through.
13 February 2016
One of the most vexing things about fashion, in its current globalized condition, is the matter of what to do about “seasons.” Dion Lee, who’s got a booming business back in his native Australia, but who shows his collections in New York, is one designer who feels the pressure to accommodate all kinds of weather at all times of year very keenly. Pre-Fall, it turns out, is sort of a magical season for him—it’s the one in which the timing of deliveries of clothes to stores coincides with similarity in weather in both the Northern Hemisphere and the Antipodes.Handed the opportunity to score big, Lee did. This collection differed from his runway outings in its emphasis on utility, articulated by the unusually broad selection of outerwear, daywear, and easy-to-assimilate engineered knits that could be dressed up or down. “Utility” didn’t translate to banality—Lee’s big Mongolian coats were particularly showy—but the focus on function did extract the strain of fussiness that sometimes runs through Lee’s clothes. Even his hyper-considered evening looks in triple-ply matte jersey, with their perforated hemlines and winks of sheerness where darts would normally be, had a certain sense of ease. They seemed like they’d be no-brainers to wear. That was certainly true, as well, of laid-back looks such as Lee’s cropped trousers and midi skirt in wool organza, both of which underlined this collection’s stress on fluidity and volume, a theme that also encompassed its most challenging looks. These were micro-pleated dresses with cape backs attached to sleeves; the dresses seemed to hover about the body, as though suspended there in defiance of gravity.Even when he’s making commercial clothes—and this was a retail-friendly collection, indeed—Lee’s cerebral approach to construction comes through. The fact that he’s managing to thread his tricky ideas through clothes that come off as more or less matter-of-fact and approachable suggests that Dion Lee has arrived at a new, more mature, stage of his career.
9 December 2015
When he’s applying himself to the craft of his clothes,Dion Leeis the most rigorous of designers. He’s a brilliant technician. But the curious thing about Lee, as his show this morning underscored, is that he often seems incapable of applying the same degree of rigor to his collections overall as he does to their component parts. This is hardly a problem unique to Lee, but it’s particularly striking in his case, because both his sense of discipline and the scope of his talents are plain to see.Lee’s latest collection was a strong one, but it needed an edit. The best individual looks in the show—the black-and-navy scuba dresses with perforated flounces—were the ones that interfered most with the story Lee was trying to tell this season. And that was an interesting story: The collection’s nubby suedes, bias-cut linen gauze, and hues of rust and sand all expressed Lee’s ambition to introduce an earthy tone to his clothes, while the loose-limbed silhouettes throughout the collection and an emphasis on patterns with relaxed wraps or folds asserted a soft sensuality. Touch was key here, and was manifested on both conceptual and literal levels in Lee’s looped and fringed looks in black-and-white triple-ply jersey. The weave, he explained after the show, was inspired by the structure of skin. And the textile that resulted—Lee’s main technical innovation here—had a compelling muscularity. You could intuit the hand that had worked those jersey loops.All of which is to say, when Lee was on today, he was very on. And he was more on than off. Alongside the scuba dresses, however, there were a clutch of filler looks that should have stayed with the sales team in the showroom—to wit, the suede biker jacket and slashed miniskirt, or the anodyne dress of cobweb lace. Dion Lee is Mr. Focus when it comes to the micro: If he ever figures out how to direct that focus to the macro, there will be no stopping him.
12 September 2015
Talking about a Dion Lee collection, it's well nigh impossible to avoid describing the designer as an engineer. Lee is so technically innovative, so cleverly mathematical in the way he puts together his clothes, the word comes to you unbidden. For Resort, though, the most fitting description of Lee may well be poet. Yes, the technical prowess was in full effect, particularly in the looks that found him continuing to evolve the splicing and horizontal perforation techniques he introduced in his previous collection. But the pieces here that stayed with you were the ones that conjured a mood, an atmosphere. At an appointment today, Lee said that he wanted this collection to feel "light," and items such as his printed sundresses and off-the-shoulder bias-cut silks did indeed seem as gossamer as a reverie.When women daydream about vacationing in Mykonos, they imagine themselves—generically—in those kinds of clothes. Lee captured the romance of the vision and filled in the blanks. Elsewhere, the best of his more urbane looks carried on the lightness theme, thanks to relaxed tailoring and ribbon-y pleats and fringe that foregrounded a sense of movement. The hems of his perforated dresses, meanwhile, actually seemed to levitate. The engineering of those garments was brilliant, to be sure. But this season, process was in the service of telling a larger story. It wasn't the whole point.
8 June 2015
Dion Lee is one of fashion's premier engineers, and the fact that he's constantly rethinking garment construction has made him one of the industry's most intriguing designers. Sometimes, though, his collections can be vexing—you sense that Lee's immersion in the technical has abstracted him from other fundamental considerations, like style and wearability.This time out, he found a nice balance. His central ideas here were indeed formal ones: He was playing with gravity to create drape, and exploring the possibilities of bias-cutting, a technique he hadn't used until this season, remarkably enough. But those ideas were elaborated in accessible ways, as in the die-cut oversize mesh draped around a short evening dress, or the teal and black sheath composed of folded bias-cut satin ribbons. A lot of hard thought went into making those looks, but they came across as unmannered and easy to wear.Lee also integrated his more innovative pieces into a collection full of fairly straightforward stuff—and as it turns out, he can do the straightforward stuff very, very well. His shirting was exceedingly crisp, the riffs on menswear tailoring super-sharp and smoking hot, and his outerwear was pretty much to die for. Best of all was an emerald mohair coat: No technical innovation was required, but striking the coat's tone of louche luxe entailed another kind of intelligence. There was emotion in these clothes—sensibility, if you will, as well as sense.
14 February 2015
Sydney-based Dion Lee may show in New York, but he still prefers to look homeward for inspiration. This season, his key reference was the Australian artist Jeffrey Smart, known for, as Lee described them today, his "industrial roadside landscapes." What appealed to Lee about Smart's work, he went on to say, was the way it conjured "a dark feeling through a bright palette"—and the clothes Lee showed this morning pulled off the same trick, on the whole.In their reflective jackets and dresses trussed in seat belt-like straps or a weighty moto chain, Lee's girls came off like a particularly glam, postapocalyptic biker gang. You wondered how they'd manage to straddle a bike in one of Lee's signature body-con pencil dresses, though, or whether they'd get windburn on all the skin winking through the dresses' cutouts. You also spared a concern for the possibility that one of the collection's many dangling straps could get caught in a tire or the gears. Silly thoughts, perhaps, but they get at something problematic in Lee's oeuvre, which is his tendency to let his brilliant talent for engineering patterns move him in the direction of overcomplicated clothes. He should put that talent to work on streamlining. The most pared-back looks were the ones that struck a chord today: the show-opening strapless dress, sculpted out of silver mesh; a tunic in a brash painted print; a halter top trimmed in that heavy chain, worn over a pair of fluid black pants.Lee's track-style jackets hit a refreshingly realistic, streetwise note, and the black lace threaded with iridescent plastic yarn was seriously cool, and probably underutilized. Lee has a gift for weird fabrics alongside his gift for engineering patterns, but too frequently they cancel each other out—once again, a good deal of simplification seemed in order. As it is, Lee is either working too hard or not hard enough.
6 September 2014
Body-con is Dion Lee's signature, and it's proven a huge hit at home in Australia. The 28-year-old designer opened a store in Sydney in December and his Melbourne boutique is set to open later this month. This week in Paris, Lee unveiled a Resort collection that explored labyrinths and the notion of connectivity through prints, textured fabrics, and deft patternmaking. There were plenty of his fits-like-a-glove dresses, but the collection was notable for the diversity of its silhouettes. At its most literal, the labyrinth showed up in white against a lawn-print background on a boxy minidress or a knee-length halter dress. Both looked easy enough to wear. Another halter-neck dress in leather and bonded jersey reproduced the maze's geometries in a less satisfying way—it looked stiff. The most compelling looks in the collection featured twisted and folded fabric at the waist. Origami came to mind. It was a real marvel that all that extra material didn't add bulk. Elsewhere, new proportions included shorts and skorts with a filmy skirt overlay. A swimwear line with twisted fabric details, meanwhile, had sufficient appeal to make even the most bikini-averse reconsider her position.
27 June 2014
You can take the boy out of Australia, but you can't take Australia out of the boy. Now in his second season on the runway in New York after two in London, Sydney-based designer Dion Lee is once more exploring his roots. "Nostalgic Australiana," he called it backstage. Having caught the attention of stores like Bergdorf's with earlier collections inspired by Bondi Beach surf culture and Sydney's famous opera house, Lee went beyond the city limits this season.His first order of business was to look at tailored silhouettes modeled on convicts' workwear. You might recall from world history that the Brits settled Australia in the late-eighteenth century as a penal colony. The boxy cut of the chalk-stripe jacket and asymmetric skirt that Lee opened with tamped down the sex appeal that has become his most important signature (the silver cap-toed ankle boots certainly played their part). And the foldover-sleeve coat that followed a few looks later seemed to signal we were in for a different Dion Lee entirely. As the show progressed, that turned out to be only partly true, but the ease of knitted mohair turtleneck dresses split up the sides over softly pleated, full skirts was certainly new for this designer. Everyday pieces like that will broaden his reach.Still, Lee remained at his most vital doing the body-con thing he's known for. Before long, we were in the Australian outback, and, amazingly, a crocodile hide was wedged into the back of a tailored leather jacket, while another one was placed down the front of a leather halter dress. Snakeskin was sliced into narrow strips and crisscrossed the torso like a harness. Those pieces were technical marvels, and they'll probably be prohibitively expensive, but he synthesized his ideas on softer dresses in sun-faded pastels embroidered in tarnished silver. They were gorgeous. Let's hope Lee never runs out of Australiana to riff on.
6 February 2014
Sydney-based designer Dion Lee kicked off his first ever New York show with a kind of art performance: The room darkened, and a hypnotic series of projections were screened onto the tall white boxes at the top of the catwalk. Finally, all the light in the room narrowed itself to one rectangle, and the girl in the first look stepped into it. This was all very much a throat-clearing gesture: Lee, the most admired and original designer to have come out of Australia, was giving a little fanfare by way of introduction to New York. Much of the show felt like an extension of that, as Lee revisited many of the ideas and techniques that have made his name over the past few years.For those unfamiliar with Lee's work, his 3-D pattern making, textile innovation, and rigorous, futuristic take on body-con undoubtedly came off as bracingly new. Showgoers acquainted with the designer's oeuvre, meanwhile, would likely feel that this collection was more about refinement than progression. That's not a criticism: Lee has advanced a lot of ideas recently, so it was smart of him to seize this opportunity to take stock. And as a result of that, all the clothes here had the look ofclothes—wearable stuff, or, at any rate, wearable for the girl prepared to go out in a super-bare bustier top made entirely from molded panels of leather cord. Lee does not design for the shrinking violet. One new idea he did introduce here, though, was a bit more circumspect. It turned out that the tiered, column-shaped dress in black and cobalt was made from the material used to face neoprene, and Lee had sculpted the pleats into the dress by bonding the fabric in different ways. That look wasn't the flashiest on the runway, but it did assert a new direction for Lee, one in which he applies his considerable technical imagination to the task of designing for women who aren't Amazons.
10 September 2013
Of all the designers to enter the swimwear market, Dion Lee is the one for whom it's the no-brainer. Not only because Lee is Australian, but also, and especially, because he is a designer engaged with the body. You do want a swimwear designer to think as Lee does, engineering new and artful ways of revealing, elaborating, or concealing the natural female form. The suits Lee created for the swimwear capsule he launched this season aren't exactly paradigm shifting, but they do boast his signature mix of sex and rigor. And you suspect there's greater innovation to come.Thinking about swimwear got Lee thinking about water. And water became the main theme of this collection, expressed through both print and construction. More specifically, Lee found himself extrapolating the idea of oil and water, and how the two fluids co-exist, but in a state of perpetual separation. Hence the rather trippy prints here, and the abstract graphic cutouts and welded embellishments. The shiny finishes, too, were inspired by oil slicks, whereas water got additional play in Lee's patternmaking, which emphasized wavelike forms and Möbius draping. A leather sheath dress, for instance, boasted a sculpted shoulder that just about looked surf-able. That was the collection's most dramatic look by far; in general, the clothes were relatively down-to-earth. It was nice to see Lee applying his engineering talents to pieces that were really relaxed, like his easygoing white slipdress with an orange neoprene lining. Like water, it just flowed.
1 July 2013
Dion Lee deserves to be counted among the major emerging fashion talents. Without a doubt the most interesting designer to come out of Australia, where he is still based, Lee has proven over the past several seasons that he has the imagination and the skill to keep changing his game. Just when you thought he was all about magically suspended dresses and glow-in-the-dark string, he switched things up and rewrote the manual on three-dimensional printing and construction techniques. This season he opened another chapter, innovating a truly original process of felting wool to mesh to create clothes that had not only an ombré visual effect but also texture. It's no wonder Lee found his way onto the short list for this year's International Woolmark Prize.The felting wasn't the only development here. Taking the Sydney Opera House as inspiration, Lee experimented with construction that echoed its sail-like architecture; one example of that was a series of bonded leather-and-neoprene skirts, which he'd draped from circular pieces of fabric. Then, riffing on the idea of sailing, he contemplated the effect of wind on materials: He gave a bit of unexpected lift to certain silhouettes, and developed a very cool cyclone print. Lee is a rigorous thinker. This collection wasn't as flashy as his last one, and though there was a decent amount of skin on display, it wasn't quite as sexy as his previous efforts, either. That felt like a loss, inasmuch as Lee is one of the very few designers who knows how to apply intellect to sex appeal. But there was still a lot of genuinely new thinking here, especially in the felted pieces. Those looks were so odd, and so good, you had to wish that Lee would give himself at least another season to explore the felting theme before he changes his game again.
3 March 2013
Dion Lee may not know it, but he writes sci-fi. A few of the looks at his show today could have been escapees from a dystopian Philip K. Dick alternaverse where women wear razor-sharp leather jackets and little black dresses with built-in backpacks. (Or make that jet packs?) Other looks seem to have come from a world where society girls have, for reasons TBD, crossbred with species of irradiated fish. And others appeared to have been the brainchild of some mad scientist applying geothermal mapping technology to the female form. Only that last thing—that's not fiction, that's fact.Lee, of course, would be that mad scientist. The pride of the Aussie fashion scene, he started showing in London last season, a move that coincided with a major advance in his technical ambition as a designer. This collection was something of an engineering marvel, boasting three-dimensionally printed dresses and suits, the complex construction of which beggared the imagination. Lee was kind enough to explain: He started with the geothermal mapping, abstracted the information about body hot zones into placement prints that he put on both sides of his fabric, and then he began slashing and folding, building out the print's third dimension. (We imagine these pieces will be very expensive: They deserve to be.) Lee also used his slicing and folding technique to create a kind of spinal column of peekaboo skin; on black leather, the technique evinced aBlade Runnertone. Elsewhere, the designer's techno-gothic side got a utilitarian workout in those backpack dresses and jackets.So this collection was technically showy. In some ways, though, the strongest looks here were the ones that hadn't been subjected to quite so much obvious labor. There was something stirring, for instance, in Lee's seemingly simple, orange-flashed looks—the bicolor tank, worn with wrapped, half-sheer slouchy pants, and a relaxed yet sharply cut dress with a transparent orange inset. These designs were futuristic, too, but not in the sense that someone might wear them one day eons hence. They were futuristic in that they looked like clothes women will want to wear next spring.
14 September 2012
Editors and buyers at Sydney fashion week last month grumbled about the absence of Dion Lee. The 26-year-old up-and-comer with the skills to match his ambition has opted to show in London in September instead. But he's in New York this week showing off Resort, and he brought a sunny, athletic down under vibe with him. Lee grew up near the ocean in Sydney, and its influence was reflected here. You could see it in the fine neoprene bonded to Lycra he used for a skirtsuit and dress with laser-cut detailing at the back. In the sporty feel of a silk cupro zip-up jacket and matching shorts. In the barely-there-ness of a peplum top worn with a sheer wrap evening skirt. Another clever idea: knits made from a reflective yarn. The street-style photogs will love the way they pop in the camera flash.
13 June 2012
Before his presentation today, Australian designer Dion Lee explained—rather meekly—that he saw his London fashion week debut as "an introduction."Suffice it to say, London fashion week was very pleased to meet him. Lee is incontrovertibly the leading light of fashion Down Under, and as his new collection confirms, he is certainly ready for a larger stage.It's tempting to describe the appeal of Lee's clothes in terms of their technical accomplishments: the geometry of the silhouettes; the innovative, architectural quality of the construction; the unexpected materials artfully deployed. You can't avoid talking about those elements of Lee's work, and they form a tremendous part of its appeal. In this collection, for instance, he created strands of high-visibility fiber, and wove them into light-reflecting knits, and draped them off sheaths. (Perfect for cycling back from a party at night, maybe.) Another dress, suspended from nearly invisible mesh, appeared to hang on the body as if by magic; elsewhere, garments made from layered tulle and organza looked as though they were held together strictly by light. There is a cool intelligence operating here.But what makes Lee really interesting, and eventually, perhaps, significant, is that his intellect doesn't work at cross-purposes to the unavoidable sexiness of his clothes. There is something deeply Australian about that: For whatever reason, designers from Oz seem to have a totally non-vexed relationship to sex and body-consciousness, and Lee embraces that, mitigating the potential aridity of his designs by integrating vampy notes. This collection felt relatively small in its ambitions and incredibly precise in surpassing them. Now that Lee has introduced himself, it will be fascinating to see what he does when he starts dreaming big.
20 February 2012