Edeline Lee (Q2986)
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Edeline Lee is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Edeline Lee |
Edeline Lee is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Edeline Lee’s studio is situated two floors above a chaotic main road not far from Shoreditch. Home to umpteen fast-food joints and one of the last remaining pubs with burlesque poles, this is, even despite the gentrification that has torn through East London in the past 30 years, as off-map as it gets. And through an unassuming door on a side street is an almost utopian vision. Double-height ceilings, spiral staircases, and—this week—a drawing room boasting Lee’s spring 2025 collection in a palette that would rival a high-end patisserie: pale corals, banana yellows, champagne creams, and powder blues.Everything Lee sells is cut, stitched, and packaged within those four walls, and sure enough there was a clutch of seamstresses in the adjacent room slicing through reams of aqueous fabrics. The designer is proud to run an efficient production line, and her brand is animated with all kinds of smart solutions. Most of Lee’s pieces—made from a signature flou bubble jacquard—can be shoved into the bottom of a suitcase at a moment’s notice and spring back to life without so much as a crease. “My women have nonstop schedules,” the designer said. “Traveling, leading board meetings, dropping off their kids. They need a functional wardrobe that takes them day to night.” This season offered no shortage of practical options—high-waisted boot-legs, crepe de chine blouses, cinched-waist jackets, and swing dresses with adjustable sleeves—but even She-E-Os are prone to fantasy.And so Lee sent a score of showpieces around the base of the Millbank Tower in Pimlico—the former glass-and-steel headquarters of the Labour and Conservative parties and the United Nations—for her debut catwalk presentation since joining the London Fashion Week schedule in 2018. There were sequined high-neck gowns with elaborately ruffled shoulders and empire-line dresses with gathered trains. Bouffant dresses, bar jackets, and sleeveless minis were constructed with removable pannier undergarments. “I’m always thinking about comfort and fit,” the designer said. “That means giving room to the hips.” A season of firsts also included the brand’s inaugural shoe—a block-heeled court—and a children’s range worn by a cast of young models toting balloons through a happy mise-en-scène featuring Yorkshire terriers and old-fashioned bicycles.A dot print developed with artist Carolina Mazzolari evoked a child’s happy experiments in watercolors.
You got the impression that Lee—a designer who refers to Donna Karan as her “spirit animal” for having established her own wardrobe of grab-and-run workwear in the ’90s—was providing her high-powered clients with a little room to dream. “I’m just hoping as many of my women as possible show up wearing the clothes,” she said. “I want the press to feel the spirit of what they’re about and why they shop with us. It’s not just about the clothes. It’s the people sitting among you.” The prime minister’s wife, Victoria Starmer, was beaming from this morning’s audience in a dress of Lee’s making.
16 September 2024
In keeping with Edeline Lee’s penchant for subverting the typical presentation format, the designer skipped a models-in-looks wingding for fall in favor of an intimate breakfast in Mayfair. This season she wanted to give a personal introduction to the project that showcases her latest collection: 33 portraits of mothers and daughters wearing her inclusive designs, from childrenswear for four-year-olds to ladieswear in a UK size 22.“The idea was basically to celebrate family, the relationship between mothers and daughters, and how clothes bind them together,” said Lee, tucked into a velvet banquette in the plush environs of Mount St. Restaurant. “We know that fashion isn’t just clothes—often it’s the space where mothers and daughters meet. When I see a mother sharing a dress with her daughter, it’s wonderful.”Having focused on eveningwear and red-carpet gowns for spring, Lee looked to reality for fall. She gathered an eclectic group of boldface names from the worlds of art, culture, fashion, and academia to step into her east London HQ, where all her clothes are made, and play dress-up. The roster included everyone’s favorite classics professor Mary Beard, the actor Olivia Williams, andVogue’s own global director of talent and casting, Rosie Vogel-Eades, along with their daughters. The women showed off Lee’s versatile designs: detachable caped sleeves, adjustable necklines, and flared shapes that are easily flattering on different bodies.Many women featured in the look book were present to toast the project over eggs Florentine and flat whites on Monday morning. This reporter’s tablemate was Helena Morrissey, the Conservative peer, financier, founder of the 30 Percent Club (which aims to up the female quota on executive committee levels), and, famously, a mother of nine. “When I started working in the city,” she divulged, “the outfits were pretty boring—lots of strong shoulders. Now, there’s more color and variety.” A long-term client of Lee’s who frequently wears her sleek bubble-jacquard dresses for days in the House of Lords, Morrissey was photographed for Lee’s portrait series with Bea, the youngest of her children.You couldn’t get more high-powered than Morrissey as an unofficial ambassador—and in an era when adolescent K-pop stars are commanding the spotlight in numerous campaigns for luxury brands, Lee’s commitment to highlighting working women in all their multifaceted sparkle offered a refreshing dose of relatability.
19 February 2024
Edeline Lee was getting a little bored of the standard interview question, “Who is your muse?” So she invented a multi-faceted heroine of her own, dubbed “Future Lady.” On the evidence of Lee’s spring collection, Future Lady is paint box-bright colorful, crease-proof practical, occasionally sparkling, and always on the move: Lee’s models strode around a raw-concrete art gallery in Mayfair, some motoring ahead with the focus of a commuter looking to catch the 11.17 train, some multi-tasking with a phone in their hand. This wasn’t just for effect. One model was catching up on her Korean practice via the Duolingo app as she debuted a draped gold lamé-jacquard gown.On that note, Lee was ploughing more of an eveningwear-focussed furrow for spring, working with sequins for the first time. If that sounds like a bit of a departure for a designer who has built her business largely on workwear-appropriate clothes, she still had function in mind. “The core of the brand has always been about service to women,” she said. “My dresses pack well, travel well, and suit any circumstance—the eveningwear is the same, and it fits lots of different sizes.” She pointed out a cinnamon-hued mini dress with a fitted waist and draped skirt, remarking, “This dress, the draping is almost like pleats, but it’s super controlled—it’s so flattering but aesthetically advanced.”Function-meets-form has stood Lee in good stead from a business perspective, so it stands to reason that her customers will go to her for after-dark looks as well as C-suite dresses. The A-listers already are: actors Olivia Colman, Naomi Harris and America Ferrera have recently worn her clothes for red carpet appearances. Lee’ success is all the more remarkable when one considers her East London production unit, with fabrics cut and dyed in Yorkshire. “It’s always hard to be independent,” she says. “We are producing everything here in the UK which I think is pretty rare. We pay duties to bring the fabric in, then duties to bring it out. But I feel grateful that we have enough buoyancy to ride through.”
19 September 2023
If you were one of the local office workers taking an afternoon stroll along Piccadilly today, you may have noticed something out of the ordinary. Under the grand eaves of the covered shopping thoroughfare Burlington Arcade, attendants dressed in head-to-toe black were handing out copies of TheEdeline Lee Times. If that faux Fleet Street title sounds unfamiliar, that’s because it wasn’t a newspaper at all; or rather, it was a mockup made by designer Edeline Lee to introduce her immersive presentation, which took place along the high-end boutiques of the arcade, and around the art world hub of Cork Street. (It also came at the end of a week of high theatrics in London this season, from Florence Pugh at Harris Reed and Sir Ian McKellen at S.S. Daley, to Richard Quinn’s crawling BDSM cats, and Di Petsa’s sage-burning rituals.)Given Lee’s multitude of cultural interests—she noted that the process of essentially taking over a whole block of central London was smoothed by her preexisting relationships with some of the galleries, and past show collaborators including writer-comedian Sharon Horgan and London theater titan Josie Rourke—today’s event, directed by Zeina Durra, marked a return to her preferred method of showing. Still, as Lee notes, she’s never done anything quite on this scale before. “Everyone I’ve spoken to has said it’s cheered them up,” said Lee, laughing. “Which is exactly what I hoped for.”If her objective was to bring a little mirth to an uncharacteristically sunny February afternoon in London, she certainly achieved it. Her own guest list mingled happily with curious members of the public, who gathered to watch the City of London School children’s choir sing an arrangement of a Chopin Mazurka in the shadow of the Royal Academy of Arts. (The melody was echoed by everyone from jazz musicians leaning out of the windows of the arcade, to flautists playing on the street, to a concert pianist tinkling ivories in a vacant gallery space.) Elsewhere, a model in a refined woolen trench coat dyed a rich, deep green handed out bushels of daisies and dahlias; others wrangled Dalmatians, leaned against a lamppost reading Virginia Woolf, stacked shopping bags into a vintage Mercedes, or sat on a throne-like chair to have their shoes shined—a cozily nostalgic vision of how a glamorous Londoner might live.
21 February 2023
Despite the London fashion community’s best efforts to reschedule shows impacted by Queen Elizabeth’s funeral, there was still a handful of designers who were unable to present their collections as initially planned. One was Edeline Lee, who was all geared up to return to the runway for the first time since the beginning of the pandemic. With her longtime love of theater that has seen previous shows feature everything from contemporary dance to sound baths, one imagines she had quite the spectacle up her sleeve. Still, Lee was looking on the bright side. “At least we have it ready to go for next season,” she said cheerily, while presenting the collection in a private apartment on Harley Street.Thankfully, the steely spirit of Lee’s collection still came through. As a go-to designer for working women, her smart gowns are eminently practical, whether thanks to her signature pebble-texturedfloububble jacquards that can be stuffed in a suitcase and emerge crinkle-free, or her booming bespoke service that allows her to offer her most popular styles in any color, all crafted in her London factory. Here, Lee’s balance of contemporary strength and traditional femininity shone. The starting point, she said, was the work of pioneering French feminist writer Hélène Cixous; more specifically, her 1975 essay “The Laugh of the Medusa,” which considers the beauty behind the horror of the famous mythical gorgon of its title. “The collection pays tribute to the beauty within that danger, to the heroism of women fighting to be themselves,” Lee said.If that all sounds a little highfalutin, worry not, as it translated into plenty of desirable clothes. Lee’s focus on tailoring was firmly present, but she also went in some more extravagant directions: Swishy pleated skirt sets and dresses with lavishly draped skirts that featured up to 20 meters of fabric were both feather-light and flamboyant, variously inspired by everything from the gladiatorial uniforms of Amazonian warriors to the gowns of Athena in classical statuary. Most striking were the thick, stringy cables of fabric that were twisted, coiled, and draped across the gowns as a nod to the snakes of Medusa’s hair, adding a welcome touch of bombast to the designer’s razor-sharp silhouettes. Sure, it would have been lovely to see the dynamism of the clothes in movement, but Lee’s can-do attitude is admirable all the same—her loyal clientele will simply be awaiting her return to the runway even more eagerly.
20 September 2022
“I decided to pare it back a little,” said Edeline Lee of her latest collection, which marked a dramatic shift from the kaleidoscope of 53 colors she employed last season. Instead, she opted for an almost entirely black and white palette—all the better to emphasize the new silhouettes she was experimenting with. “I went back to my roots, really,” she said of the collection’s new riffs on her staple offering of day-to-night dresses with a twist. “I have patterns here that I was working on when I was a student,” she continued. “We literally dug through the entire archive.”Of course, Lee then happily set about tweaking some of these blueprints. Her eye for fit has evolved significantly since her student days, she explained, while the vast array of custom textiles she’s developed over the years afforded her the ability to play around with more dramatic, sculptural forms. Her signature “flou bubble” jacquard—with an eye for practicality, these are dresses you can pack in a suitcase only for them to spring back to life, crease-free—came in an array of adventurous shapes. More playful details included cheeky chest embellishments, swishy diagonal pleats, and chiffon skirts that erupted with feather-light tufts of shimmering Lurex. The luxurious nature of the clothes made itself known with characteristic modesty, from hefty coats cut from recycled cashmere to buttons that were hand-dipped in Italy. (Lee prides herself on knowing where and how her clothes are made down to the very last detail, from her dyeing contractors in Yorkshire to the east London studio where all of her production takes place.)There were also a handful of brand new templates, inspired in part by Lee launching her first physical retail space last weekend in the department store Harrods. True to Lee’s sustainable ethos, she’s also hoping to use the space to grow her ability to create bespoke pieces, offering to turn around any of her dresses in the customer’s chosen colorway within a week. “Doing the shop made me stop and ask, ‘What is this brand exactly?’” she said. “Obviously I have my signatures and I know who I’m dressing, who my woman is. But I realized I could push it forward a little bit.”That’s the heart of what Lee does, after all. For her, the loyal clientele she’s cultivated throughout her brand’s nine-year history comes first—and with the addition of a retail space, it’s a following that is only set to grow.
“The clothes always need to have a little structure, a little formality, to be able to work in them,” she said, firmly. Form may follow function for Lee, but there were plenty of aesthetic innovations to be charmed by this season, too.
21 February 2022
Edeline Lee’s spring ’22 collection has a surprisingly sunny disposition when you consider it was conceived while the UK was in lockdown. But then she tells you how she spent her lockdown evenings: “Literally, I spent every night working on color theory; playing with colour wheels and mixing combinations,” she says over a Zoom call from her studio. “I had an idea of making a rainbow, a whole spectrum of optimistic color.” 53 colors to be precise, and each one rediscovered in her own atelier. “We were still in the middle of a pandemic and it just felt wrong to order more fabric, and so I looked around my studio and thought, ‘I’m just going to use everything here.’ We used all the leftovers from previous seasons.”The result looked anything but cobbled together. “I wanted it to feel very free; to be about escapism,” she explains. That was a feeling that extended to her digital presentation too, which set her clothes against Kyung Roh Bannwart’s dreamy landscapes varying from mountain ranges to outer space. “It was at a moment where we all felt pretty trapped, so the idea of breaking free, of being able to go anywhere without limitations—all the way to the moon should your heart desire—felt really appealing.” FrankNitty3000 worked on the trippy animations for her directorial debut, Tom Burke wrote the spacey soundtrack, and Christina Wood contributed the vocals.Surrealism aside, Lee notes there are plenty of solutions for work (her business is rooted in dressing the professional woman; most of her fabrics are immune to wrinkling, for example). Now that her customer is returning to the office, she will be in need of a look that extends beyond waist-up-Zoom-appropriate. But there is ample after-office-hours drama to be found here too, like cocktail numbers decorated in bows that are boned to hold their shape. “I was looking at the Met Gala this week, and it was great to see women dress up again. I think we all need that now,” says Lee. “Because what’s our job as designers if it isn’t to offer joy?”
20 September 2021
Edeline Lee’s “digital premiere” opens with an introduction in her own voice: “Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the meaning that lives in our clothes, the nostalgia and memories that we attach to our clothing,” she says, before sharing a short story and urging her listeners to put on their headphones and close their eyes. The 15-minute podcast is possibly a big ask for an audience of time-starved editors, but hey, let’s begin.It tells the story of Georgia, a woman downloading her memory bank to a “program” without a name but with a model number and an option to name her—Georgia calls her Lynne after a friend who is a good listener. We listen as photographs are presented to her to contextualize and file under “good” or “bad.” The story centers around a memory of her mother twirling in front of the mirror in her favorite malachite-colored dress: It was intended to be worn to Georgia’s wedding, but instead her mother was buried in it. Yet she would have found it fun wearing “a great dress to a terrible party.”“I wanted to explore how digitally we can touch people,” says Lee from her studio with a rail of the collection behind her. “How do you give someone an experience online—ahumanexperience? We are always separated by a screen, and it made me think about how clothes are on the surface too, but what do they really mean? This storytelling touched that nerve at a deeper level...I don’t know, maybe lockdown is getting to me!” She laughs, but she has a point.Lee, who started out as a dressmaker, has built her brand on “dresses and tops and bottoms that women can do their whole day in: drop off the kids, head to work, nothing will wrinkle.” Her hit is a universally flattering wrap dress because it can be worn loose or fitted. Those core pieces are all here this season, but she’s taken that demand for no-fuss further with a series of separates like tapered track pants and a short-sleeve dressing-gown coat in piqué GOTS-certified organic cotton. (To that end, Lee has been working on more sustainable practices; all of her linings, trims, and packaging are sustainably sourced.) “My pattern cutting is loosening up—I’m needing that comfort more and more,” she says. “My customers still need that great top for Zoom, but many of them are working from home, so they’re asking for this too.”And when they want to up the ante? Lee will no doubt point them in the direction of one of her brushstroke-printed jacquard tops.
“We’ve been starved of taking care of ourselves: getting our hair done! I don’t even wear heels that much, but I’m going to have to start wearing them around the house otherwise I’m going to completely forget how to wear them. It has been really strange. The thing about clothes is that it’s nice to have a veneer sometimes, to present yourself in a certain way.” Even if, for now, that’s only through a screen.
22 February 2021
If you didn’t make a cake in lockdown, did you even really experience lockdown? Edeline Lee, formerly a baking novice, is a case in point: She perfected her icing technique to such a degree that a frosted exemplar appeared in the film she made to launch her spring collection. Intended as a “lighthearted” snapshot of the last six months, it depicts a young woman flitting around a room—dancing, reading, sleeping, arranging flowers, scooping icing absent-mindedly off that cake—in the kinds of polished pieces for which Lee has become known.She screened it in a derelict, Grade II-listed Regency building in Marylebone, central London, along with a selection of models and a curation of exquisite antique Nordic furniture courtesy of the Stockholm-based gallery Modernity. It wasn’t as atmospheric, perhaps, as some of the experiential set-ups she has played with in the past. As she admits, “I love creating a different energy in the room, and you can control that environment physically but not in a film.” Still, combined with the peeling plaster of the high-ceilinged rooms, the ’50s Svenskt Tenn furniture, the smiling models, it felt like a sensible response to an LFW schedule that has been overshadowed by rising concern about a possible coronavirus second wave in the UK.Also sensible: Lee’s decision to focus on core designs that have sustained her business up until now, produced in a factory in London with fabric sourced from Italy, France, and Switzerland, and dyed in Yorkshire. Lee makes clothes that are catnip to the professional working woman who doesn’t have the time to iron or color-coordinate her wardrobe, nor the inclination to skip lunch. Her best-selling Pina midi-dress has a ruched curve over the waist “so that you can eat without feeling uncomfortable,” as she puts it. No wonder the British superwoman financier Dame Helena Morrissey—a former City fund manager and mother-of-nine, highly regarded in the U.K. for having established the 30% Club, an initiative which aims to increase the representation of women on FTSE 100 company boards—is a fan of her crepe de chine, go-anywhere dresses. “I dress the kind of women who are always in front, speaking, leading things,” she says.In service of those loyal clients who commissioned her when she started out as a “dressmaker,” in her words, the top floor of the presentation space was given over to key styles from her archive, in new colorways and fabrics.
“Many of them come back every season for the same dress in a different color,” she says. And any of them would look pulled together in one of her fitted looks from this accomplished collection.
21 September 2020
Edeline Lee loves an immersive experience, and today she took Fashion Week to theater land with a presentation at the Apollo in London’s West End. The designer collaborated with her talented director friend, Josie Rourke, who is currently working on a production ofCity of Angels, a film noir musical. The two first connected after Lee dressed Rourke for an event last year, and they’ve since bonded over a love of fashion and the femme fatale archetype, which loomed large at Lee’s show this afternoon.Models swept onto the darkened stage in a series of choreographed vignettes that twisted the conventions of film noir. The hard-boiled voiceover was straight out of a Raymond Chandler novel and was interspersed with readings from feminist literature by the likes of Simone de Beauvoir and Gloria Steinem. It provided a theatrical backdrop to Lee’s repertoire of classic day dresses, which the designer refreshes each season with a new palette. In keeping with the dramatic mood, there were ladies in various shades of red.Lee turned her hand to outerwear for the first time, adding a series of coat styles made from sustainable Italian wool. The pick of the bunch was cut slim through the body with a face-framing statement collar that would pair nicely with her waisted frocks. There was new suiting too, including a two-piece in an eye-catching gold fil flottant that seemed ready for the red carpet. Even still, it was the draped, goddess-style gowns that took center stage today and are most likely to appeal to her circle of creative and accomplished friends.
17 February 2020
Edeline Lee was an early adopter of the immersive Fashion Week experience. Over the last year or so, she’s used her show space for creative play (think, Pina Bausch–style dance performances), or in the case of Fall 2019, a public forum for feminist voices. Her latest act was born out of a conversation with Sharon Horgan, the award-winning actor, writer, and producer. Together they conceived of a series of theatrical vignettes scripted to bring a slice of the real world to the runway. The scenes were universally familiar: a dinner party conversation gone wrong; an awkward breakup, for example. Still, there was a wry, irreverent tone to Horgan’s dialogue that brought a sense of levity to the drama.Lee rarely strays from her key dress silhouettes, though she does like to experiment with color and prints. Worn by models who wafted past the drama unfolding on the catwalks, the zebra-stripe day pieces stood out the most; one sundress tiered with orange, yellow, and blue stripes in particular was a scene-stealer. As for the actresses in the show, there was nothing costumey about their smart navy blue belted dresses. Though you could imagine them being just as comfortable in the label’s newer red carpet looks, including a kelly green short-sleeved floor-length gown that was cinched at the waist with a skinny tonal belt. Lee’s ability to dress real women who find themselves in the spotlight—Horgan and her peers—will put her in good stead as she moves into occasion dressing.
17 September 2019
Edeline Lee likes to think outside the box of the traditional Fashion Week show. Today she upped the ante on the Pina Bausch–style dance performance of last season, inviting a host of accomplished women across the worlds of art, science, and technology onto the stage. “In this industry we are always talking about women, but rarely do we give them the opportunity to speak,” said Lee of her presentation. “I wanted to give them a voice.”Inspired by professor Mary Beard’s feminist manifesto,Women & Power, Lee made the case for runway as soapbox. The acclaimed Cambridge University classicist held court, kicking off with a speech advocating the public voices of women. In the hour that followed, dozens of women took to the podium to share their stories. There were some familiar fashion faces in the lineup, including British fashion journalist Hilary Alexander, but the majority weren’t industry insiders. They came from a broad spectrum of backgrounds and experiences, and included Jane Bonham Carter, a member of the House of Lords; Zoe Whitley, a curator at the Tate Modern; Reverend Dr. Christina Beardsley, a Church of England Priest and LGBTQI rights activist; and Grace Savage, a singer, songwriter, and U.K. beatbox champion.Granted, an hour-long fashion presentation isn’t something every editor or buyer can commit to. With only one model onstage at any one time, very few attendees would have been able to see every look in the collection, which included some eye-catching outerwear in silk jacquard, an opulent fabric that’s been everywhere in London. Still, the unconventional format was food for thought, underscoring the importance of community and creative kinship in fashion. And given the quiet nature of Lee’s clothes, which tend to evolve incrementally each season, the experiential approach was a smart way for the brand to stand out. With many of the speakers dressed in her practical circular-cut midi dresses and unfussy fluted skirts, Lee proved that her designs can hold their own in the real world.
18 February 2019
What does the fashion “experience” look and feel like? Designers on both sides of the pond have been posing the question. Edeline Lee let her imagination take the lead this season, conceiving her presentation as a contemporary dance spectacular. Inspired by dance legends such as Pina Bausch and Trajal Harrell, the 15-minute-long performance encompassed familiar scenes from the fashion world, including interpretative takes on the red carpet arrival, the runway show, and the classic fashion after-party. It was a clever way to captivate the audience in a generic show space. In fact, editors and buyers were craning their necks to capture footage of the show for Instagram.Golden social media moments aside, the presentation shone the spotlight on a more body-positive approach to dressing, too. The dancers in the show came in various shapes and sizes. The simple scarlet, ivory, and green ruffle-trimmed spaghetti-strap frocks and long-sleeved A-line dresses managed to look flattering on just about every member of the cast. That kind of performance art goes a long way in the real world, too.
17 September 2018
Resort debuts can be a useful exercise in brand fine-tuning. That’s certainly true for Edeline Lee, who rather than present a highfalutin narrative or concept-based collection, zeroed in on the arty essence of her eponymous line with a showcase of her best sellers. “The woman that I dress doesn’t care about [fashion] seasons,” she says of the eminently wearable looks that her loyal customer invests in time and again. “They want flattering, intelligent clothes that make them feel polished and show off their aesthetic sense.” Lee’s best-selling Hannah pencil skirt and Telluride shirtdress were presented in crisp, cool tones. “Sky blue and green are the cleanest and freshest colors that I can think of right now,” said Lee of her bubble jacquard ensembles, which she promises emerge crease-free even from the most haphazard holiday packing.This season Lee explored a historic vocabulary, studying the ruffs and neckpieces of Charles II. “I was trying to figure out a way to make them feel contemporary, easy, and wearable,” said Lee, who streamlined the English king’s frills on the neck of blouses, skirts, and trouser hems. Sometimes these flourishes were more exaggerated: The Swag dress featured double-tiered ruffles that extended from the elbow to form circular, bracelet-like puffs on sleeves; or in the case of the off-shoulder Valence dress, enveloped the décolletage. The addition of an eyelash cotton striped jacquard brought a welcome lift to the line. Its summery sensibility on a two-piece trouser look was tried and tested by Lee at the recent Serpentine Summer Party. “The super-lightweight cotton is beautiful,” said Lee of the fabric. “It literally felt like Resort.”
18 July 2018
Edeline Lee conjured a secret Zen garden for her presentation today. There were gong players to immerse guests in a soothing sound bath, and a set dotted with serene topiary-style sculptures. Lee has been in a reflective mood lately, looking inward as the chaotic news cycle rages on around her. It’s a sentiment that has been picked up by others on the fashion landscape, with many designers pondering the importance of self-care in their work.Lee looked to the holistic practices of the East to infuse her collection with a restorative energy, employing technique draping and tassel trimmings that were reminiscent of Ayurvedic robes. That reference was most effective in the outerwear, amping up the drama of a traditional cape coat with subtle sophistication. A monastic tone came through in the eveningwear, too, including a standout dress with an abbreviated Pilgrim collar. With its long sleeves and floor-length dimensions, it would appeal to young women shopping for modest options with a fashion-forward slant. The designer riffed on the notion of the original woman, and the dark floral jacquards were a nod to the Garden of Eden. Indeed, it felt as if some of Lee’s quirky sensibilities were lost in this traditionalist tableau. Still, the origami pleats that trimmed the edges of party dresses and cropped going-out tops gave a twist of difference to the usual cocktail-hour fare. Lee should explore those counterintuitive impulses further.
18 February 2018
It was clear that Edeline Lee was nervous last night. Not only was this her first time showing outside of London, she was also about to give a talk in the Neue Galerie on Manhattan’s Upper East Side alongside society doyenne Amy Fine Collins. The topic of discussion was the Wiener Werkstätte, a collective of artisans that lived and worked in Vienna from 1903 until 1932 with the mission of aligning the craftsperson with the artist—in other words, taking everyday objects and elevating them. The movement has always fascinated Lee; her Pre-Fall collection was, in a precise and unassuming way, a celebration of the work and the Neue Galerie’s new exhibition titled “Wiener Werkstätte 1903-1932: The Luxury of Beauty.” Included in the exhibition is a writing desk by Koloman Moser, a belt buckle by Josef Hoffman, and a box, etched with small fish motifs by Carl Otto Czeschka.The long-sleeved black Edeline Lee dress that Ms. Collins wore was inspired by Czeschka’s box, the tan fabric that hung loosely at the arms and the waist was meant to mimic the fins of his fish etchings, with a gold button on the shoulder to serve as the eye. It fit the woman wearing it like a glove and, as Lee said, she looked almost “like a drawing.” In the same room during the preview was the Neue Gallery’s director of communications Rebecca Lewis. She was wearing another of Lee’s Pre-Fall dresses: a sleeveless deep blue shift that was belted with a rectangular clasp inspired by the lines of Moser’s writing desk. Lewis seemed at ease in her dress, explaining that she doesn’t normally get all decked out, but that tonight it made her feel good. She looked great too.Lee designs for both of these women. Her minimal, fluid pieces can appeal to the patron of the arts and the more pared-back art-loving intellectual. The rest of the Pre-Fall collection was stellar too, particularly the white blouses with flared sleeves and sleek multicolored buttons, boxy suiting, and tops with fabric folded just so over the shoulder in the same shape as Hoffman’s geometric enamel belt buckles. Lee is well read when it comes to art, but she isn’t pretentious or over-the-top in her aesthetic. This is what’s refreshing about her as a designer, and its plain to see in her well executed collections, particularly this Pre-Fall offering. In other words, there’s nothing for her to be nervous about when it comes to her clothes, even if they are being shown in one of the most famous gallery spaces in America.
13 December 2017
Edeline Lee had a nice angle on her muse this season: Referencing Georgia O’Keeffe, a perennial designer fave, Lee focused on the fact that O’Keeffe first arrived in New Mexico on the heels of sorrow, and upon encountering that beautiful, desolate country, realized she had come home. Speaking at her presentation today, Lee said that she wanted to get at that moment in O’Keeffe’s life—its exchange between boldness and fragility—and tell a story about a woman “finding her place.”The theme prompted some of Lee’s finest work yet. “Finest” in the sense of excellence, but also in the sense of its small scale and nuance. Also, there was something of O’Keeffe’s muscular brushstroke in Lee’s inventive 3-D floral embellishment and knotted fabric motif. The collection hit its high note in the smocked shirting pieces, detailed with handwritten quotes from O’Keeffe’s letters to Alfred Stieglitz. The quotes were a nice touch, but it was the intimacy of these garments that moved you—the wispy voile, the delicate smocking, the punctuating polished buttons, the bit of volume in the sleeves. Lee tends to want her impacts to be big; it was refreshing to see her work in a quieter register.Lee’s well-proportioned flared skirts and pencil dresses had a similar sense of measure, and in that way, they provided some grounding for Lee’s broader gestures and a lovely setting for her standout fabric, a floral fil coupe jacquard. One problem here—not with the collection so much as its presentation—was that many of these looks seemed to demand bodies inside them, womanly curves. They weren’t done any favors by Lee’s casting of models rail-thin even by the fashion industry’s Mannerist standards. If a designer is going to be inspired by a woman-in-full like Georgia O’Keeffe, she ought to have the courage of her convictions and show her clothes on real women.
17 September 2017
Like many designers this season,Edeline Leeturned to the Weimar period for inspiration. Lee made a smart choice, though, in narrowing the reference down to one figure: the artist Hannah Höch, whose Dada creations had a proto-feminist inflection. With Höch as her starting point, Lee engaged a conversation on gender that veered, occasionally, into the territory of the surreal.This wasn't a perfect collection, but it certainly made for one of Lee’s strongest. Riffing on Höch’s collage techniques, Lee innovated a genuinely fresh sleeve construction, a tiered cone shape that came off especially well as an enhancement to trim black or gray wool dresses. Tiered skirts, asymmetric flounces, and trumpet-shaped flares and cuffs echoed the effect. The distended proportions of Lee’s outerwear and suiting were less successful, though those pieces did serve as a nice complement to this collection’s flirty looks in Lee’s signature pebbled jacquard. The latter had an uncomplicated appeal, as did her new knits—heavy-duty merinos made at a factory in Scotland. They had a vintage sense of heft and durability.This was a collection dotted with both clever ideas, like the magnetized buckles and buttons in cobalt, and dottier ones, such as the egg-like shapes, cued by Höch’s famousDada Puppen, which covered the breasts on several looks. That trade-off—a solid, well-earned design idea here, a gimmicky idea there—has emerged as something of an Edeline Lee trademark. The gimmicks have their fans, surely, but Lee’s more understated looks have more staying power.
18 February 2017
It was inevitable that Brexit would have an impact on designers in London. How could it not?Edeline Lee, for one, shaped her new collection in response to the vote and the nativist sentiments the secession from the E.U. implied. Her latest outing was a celebration of the heterodox London she calls home, a place where public school kids in uniforms of hoary houndstooth check inhabit the same streets as bike messengers in high-vis stripes, and track-suited working-class youth jostle at the same supermarkets as posh girls in pencil-slim sheaths and tailored sundresses.Is London so idyllic as all that? The cheerful palette and punchy graphics in Lee's collection would make you think so. There were some fine pieces in the mix here, ranging from a slouchy trenchcoat with multicolored trim to a darted sundress in pebbled jacquard to an anorak punctuated by duct-tape-like bands of black. Where Lee overstepped was in her emoji-like detail, bead embroidery and tonal designs suggestive of faces that were less expressive than undecorated clothes allowed to stand for themselves. Lee's overarching theme was a humane one; the face thing reduced the theme to a joke with an uncertain punchline. Her looks in color-blocked check, to cite one example, had plenty of personality—best to leave it at that.
17 September 2016
This was a breakthrough collection forEdeline Lee. Though she’s had a tendency, in the past, to swamp her good ideas by overthinking them, this season she gave her brain a break. At her presentation this afternoon, Lee explained that she’d been reckoning with her own desire to check out—to turn off her smartphone, tune out the news, retreat into nature—and wound up making that instinct to dramatically simplify into the starting point of her collection. By rejecting information overload, Lee gave her clothes a sense of deep focus.The best idea here, which Lee rightly emphasized, was the contrast piping on pieces in virgin wool, which created an outline effect. The piping worked as a nice punctuating element on a few demure dresses, but it really came to the fore on vastly oversize tees and coats tailored so relaxedly, they may as well have been asleep. Elsewhere, the virgin wool was complemented by other choice materials, selected for their quiet expressiveness—to wit, the pliant wool crepe that Lee used in turtlenecks and leggings, and the silk seersucker that gave a lovely drape to items such as a red maxi dress. The collection wasn’t strictly minimal; there were flashes of metal here and there, and magnified flower embroidery that echoed the pattern on a double-gauze jacquard. But even the razzle-dazzle looks had a crispness to them. They communicated clearly and got the point across.
19 February 2016
Edeline Leedrew upon a pleasing confluence of inspirations this season. The London-based designer was having a Richard Diebenkorn moment, appreciating the painter’s “Ocean Park” series, when it struck her that the artist’s palette, and his geometries, dovetailed with those of the designers of the Memphis Group. The graphic Memphis look is trending in fashion these days, and Lee wound up leaning toward that aesthetic as she whipped up pieces for her new collection; the influence was particularly clear in items such as the shift and maxi-length shirtdress featuring a multicolored geometric placement of prints.These looks had plenty of pop, but Lee was onto something fresher in the garments that conjured Diebenkorn’s more poetic tone and softer line. Specifically, the designer had winners in her twisted tops and dresses in a painterly jacquard, and the plainspoken white or pastel-colored halter tops and culottes, which suggested Diebenkorn’s brand of California cool without hammering the reference home. Elsewhere, a pencil dress that collaged several pastel-patterned fabrics married the softness of Diebenkorn’s canvases with the architectural sensibility of the Memphis school.Lee sometimes has a habit of overworking her designs, but she mostly kept a lid on that here. She flubbed a few pieces by introducing unnecessary sculptural flourishes or insisting on an out-of-whack proportion, but where she kept her looks simple, and let their fine materials, gorgeous palette, and cheerful geometries do the talking, the clothes didn’t just speak, they began to sing.
18 September 2015
Luck loves skill, hence seemingly by accident (but practically on merit), Edeline Lee has found herself a nice little niche. "Ninety percent of my clients are in the art world," she says, "directors, dealers…" That's a handy clientele to clothe—some gallerists take up to half in commission—and you can see why they want to hang Lee's pieces on themselves.Especially fine were Lee's reversible piped-seamed boiled-wool coats, painted white or in tangerine. Light and bubbly neoprene mesh, crepe, and gabardine were the mixed materials of her astutely colored, adroitly draped, and sometimes tentatively asymmetrical Fall oeuvre. It was all good stuff. Which is why it frustrated this observer that Lee seemed so determined to stay within the boundaries of her chosen territory. This presentation was held at a lovely little private art space in Camden; as we moved through the tinkling branches of a Charles Avery tree and then on past a Lichtenstein, Lee explained she favors site-specific fashion installations. Nearby, an illustrator named Isobel Williams sketched her pieces in situ. Those arrows on Lee's collection were inspired by Keith Coventry—she phoned him to ask permission to homage him—and there's a Man Ray dress, too. Her press release quote was replete with just the type of hollow rhetoric that fills the introduction of coffee-table contemporary art books: "This season, I thought of the idea of creating a three-dimensional collage. The Edeline Lee woman and the collection pop ups and layers within the foreign space of the art gallery—in an exhibition whose very concept is about the blurred lines between subject and object, time and space." Oh, purleeze. Lee could so easily spread her wings and fly beyond the narrow constituency that pendulums via Art Basel, Frieze, and the Venice Biennale. These clothes were eminently as interesting and appealing as most of their accompanying artworks, lilies reduced only by their gilding.
23 March 2015
Edeline Lee's latest collection was a marked step up from last season. Spring took her out of her comfort zone, which is usually a palette of gray, black, and white with a sparing use of color. What remained constant was the architectural element, which was a significant theme. "The way you stick a building together is very much like how you construct a garment," said Lee. "You have to start with foundation, then look at details and finishes. There are a lot of similarities between the two."Lee recently renovated her home in East London—an old Georgian house with the requisite curves and details. In the process, she fell hard for the unique colors of Little Greene, the British heritage paint company, and some of its key colors made their way into the collection, notably Mr. David Yellow. That bright hue appeared in very structured tank tops with pleat detailing, matching culottes, and shoes. An all-yellow look was a big leap for someone who is more used to working with colors like anthracite gray and chalky beige. The architectural influence was also seen in the way the presentation was staged, with each model set up inside a mock-up of a room in a house.A yellow and white tank dress had an ingenious curve, inspired by the shape of Lee's staircase and the rays of light that peek in through her windows. Those curves continued in an oversized "sweatshirt" with asymmetrical spliced sleeve details. White shirts and trousers were precisely cut and structured. Highlights were a passage of looks inspired by miter joints—featuring organza foil diagonal stripes in mint grays and gradations of black—and an eyelash dress in inky black with a nipped waist. Lee has been around too long to be a next big thing, but with this collection, bigger retailers should start taking notice.
3 October 2014
Edeline Lee is part of a burgeoning cadre of Canadian designers in London, a list that includes Erdem Moralioglu, Thomas Tait, Todd Lynn, Mark Fast, and Jean-Pierre Braganza. Unlike her fellow Canucks, most of whom come from the eastern provinces, Lee grew up in British Columbia, as a Whistler Mountain ski jock. Her new Fall collection is devoted to her inner teenager, a sporty 17-year-old who dreamed of life in the big city.Even when Lee references the past (as she did with the Bloomsbury Group last season), she imagines how those from bygone days would dress in the future. She also has a penchant for the architectural and the artistic. The first look encapsulated that: a boned bustier dress, from the waist down it was half-culotte, half sun-ray pleats. The cocoon coat that followed was made from double-faced satin and wool with a prodigious shawl collar in laminated bouclé and neoprene. Grid detailing in asphalt gray felted fabrics replicated the color of the New York City streets, and there were paper-bag waists and a top with an oversize bow that could be tied in a multitude of ways. Flaps on a jacket shoulder were shaped like glass shards from I.M. Pei's Louvre pyramid.Lee is a self-described "pattern-cutting nerd"—her precision comes from her days at Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, and Zac Posen. In the past, she's gotten flack for her monochrome-loving ways, so she injected a fair bit of Yves Klein blue here. Her arty, intellectual fans will gravitate toward the graphic black-and-white print on blue that was inspired by Japanese wood-blocking techniques.
10 March 2014
Edeline Lee has an interesting way of getting at her collections. She's intrigued by signs and symbols, visual clues to some recalled or fantasized experience. This season, for instance, her main motif was piano keys—a metonym, she explained at her London fashion week presentation, for her memories of childhood. She played piano as a kid, you see, and so here she experimented with black and white graphics, stripe-based patterns, and paneled piano pleats. All this threatened to be dangerously literal, but Lee stopped just short of that. Her most successful pieces were the ones furthest removed from the source material, like a trim pencil dress in vaguely tribal weave, the color-blocked sleeveless jackets, or a red Grecian dress draped off to one side. There was a Constructivist feel to Lee's understated white, black, and blue print gown, and the paneled construction of the collection's checkerboard looks was genuinely impressive. Lee may have been inspired by her childhood, but the effort here was decidedly grown-up.
9 October 2013
This is the fourth collection from London-based designer Edeline Lee. But she's certainly no novice: Prior to launching her line, the Central Saint Martins grad worked with Zac Posen, in that brand's early days, and then she headed up the design for the buzzy label Rodnik. Those are two very different kinds of experiences, but you can see from Lee's clothes how she would have made it work; as this collection affirmed, her aesthetic mixes refined construction and an idiosyncratic sensibility.For Fall, Lee riffed on some truly rich source material: vintage regalia from a Texas Odd Fellows' union that got her thinking about secret societies and the way clothes can communicate in code. There was an overarching quirkiness here, as she emphasized oversize sailor-suit collars, military frogging, and motifs with a vaguely Illuminati feel, which she executed in a purposefully naive way. To her credit, the clothes didn't look silly; trim pants in mottled gold and copper tweed, with a band of black down each leg, had a graphic kick but were indisputably realistic, and a soft pleated dress in turquoise, white, and black silk was an elegant extrapolation of the collection's color-blocking. Elsewhere, all her pencil-slim sheaths were winners, and a gray frogged coat averted kitsch, and looked sharp. Everything had a real sense of polish. The one quibble here, really, was that Lee's sailor dresses sometimes erred on the side of the twee. You got the sense from this collection that Lee has found her voice, but she's still in the process of modulating it.
14 March 2013