Maryam Nassir Zadeh (Q3327)
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Maryam Nassir Zadeh is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Maryam Nassir Zadeh |
Maryam Nassir Zadeh is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
2017
visuals overseer
It’s been a benchmark year for Maryam Nassir Zadeh, what with a sell-out J.Crew collaboration and a pair-up with ba&sh, which together gave her particular brand of downtown cool some major exposure. These “extracircirculars” were anything but a distraction when it came to creating her namesake collection for spring, however: “I felt more clear about what I wanted to make,” she said on a walk-through. Zadeh was just as sure about the material she wanted to use—it’s a silken spring at MNZ and a colorful one. The designer described her palette as being pulled from “ice cream” (or sorbet) hues like mango, citron, guava, pistachio, and cherry, which she balanced with brown tones, in a sort of equivalent to a milk-chocolate ice cream dip.Moodier hues were mainly used for seriously sexy bikinis, unisex looks in plaid (an unexpected trend this season), and denim. But the real draw of the collection draw were the light and bright pieces which were layered and combined in interesting ways in the lookbook by the stylist Camille Bidault-Waddington. Among the day-to-day options are the label’s best-selling dance pants, this season with a long swatch of fabric fringe hanging from one hip (a detail that also appears on a skirt). Shirting options that look femme rather than “borrowed from the boys” were inspired by vintage favorites. A leather bomber in a shade of iridescent pink you might find in a bottle of decorative “pearls” in the baking aisle was paired with a sheer chiffon wrap skirt with a generous slit. “I still have an affinity for transparency,” noted the designer, who made shrunken blouses, with a slightly ’40s air in the same material. She used habotai for weightless bra tops that you’ll want to shop like pick-and-mix candy.A side-laced ruffled cotton skirt has a substantiality that Zadeh carried over from her J.Crew collection. “Sometimes I feel when we make MNZ garments, they’re a little bit ethereal; they don’t have that weight in the depth, but I feel like this has that,” she said while holding the skirt, which was made to be taken out on the dance floor. Also fun are the many slightly structured sheaths with a decorative bands of fabric under the bust and the floaty chiffons with inset godets in contrasting colors. One wafty number was “tamed” with an insert of a Japanese woven organza, while clear sequins on cotton were overprinted in blue-and-white, nodding to the pottery Zadeh collects. Many of these frocks sit on your body like a dusting of powder.
They’re “just romantic and easy,” said Zadeh. “I feel like it’s very hard to find good dresses these days, [and] sometimes if you want to dress, you just want to feel like it’s just chill”—in terms of both aesthetics and price tag. It’s no secret that the prices of designer clothes are skyrocketing, or that as they do, perspectives on value are shifting along with them. Of working with J.Crew, she said, it was “so awesome to make something that will last for a long time that’s [also] inexpensive. I mean, if you can snatch it and hold onto it and you cherish [a piece of clothing], I feel like that could be luxury.” Maybe it’s not only beauty, but luxury too, that’s in the eye of the beholder.
15 November 2024
“I’m a textile girl.” Maryam Nassir Zadeh brought some of her very first designs (some made with materials gifted by her good friend Susan Cianciolo) into her Lower East Side store to demonstrate that claim and show the continuity between her past and present work. Her fall 2024 collection is in part informed by a recent visit to Rajasthan—note the citrus-colored metallic-threaded Indian materials made into wispy bra-tops, delicious bags, and boxers (the It-item of summer 2023), but it also builds on themes the designer has been playing with as she continues her quest of self rediscovery.In revisiting some of her aughties designs, Zadeh conjures not only her own back catalog, but a lost New York. Those gold-shot fabrics evoke the late ’90s era of Dosa, while the designer’s doughty independence links her to the heyday of Mulberry Street and environs where independent women-led boutiques like À Détacher and Mayle were destination spots, much as Zadeh is now on Norfolk Street.Befitting an autumn offering there are tailored pants and peacoats. In addition, a quality jersey is used for color-blocked “sweat” separates and a padded Members Only-meets-aviator jacket. Overshirts, good for layering, are made of denim, corduroy, and suede, the latter of which also appears on fringed skirts, tops, and scarves that can be worn as garments and are styled as such in the lookbook, which was shot in the South of France. There’s an essential sunniness to Zadeh’s work and ethos, and the non-seasonal looks—mesh pop-overs, a bias-lace dress, sheer chiffon shirts with subtle color combinations—are the attention grabbers. In fact some of the dresses and knits are so airily light they are almost ghosts of garments.As such, they relate back to MNZ’s last runway show, for spring 2023, when the designer presented mostly no-sew and ad-hoc looking ensembles (skirts that didn’t make it full circle around the body, table doily tops), using (but not cutting into) fabrics from her cherished textile collection. This was a radical move, a reset, that spoke to the art of adornment and dress as an individual and playful act. Speaking about her fall lineup, Zadeh likened some of the pieces to gift-wrapping; it’s not that they are ornate, but they do delight the eye. Zadeh’s special touch, her understanding of It-factor, has some of the same properties of fragrance, being evocative, pretty, ethereal.MNZ achieves more with less.
Zadeh’s reductionist tendencies are not, however, in service to minimalism, but to form and make. They even seem to extend to gender. “I’m putting the men in more feminine things and the women in more masculine things,” she noted. This is in keeping with the designer’s expansive mood. “It’s a full circle moment,” she said. “I’m realizing how much there is value in time—I’ve been a collector—and how elements from the past have a lot of depth, and they keep infusing my work. In a sense it feels like yesterday that I was attracted to certain things [that] now feel so sacred.” Fashion can’t save souls but it can capture the zeitgeist in ways that relate the present to what’s come before.
11 April 2024
By choice—and circumstance—Maryam Nassir Zadeh’s spring collection is framed by her changing relationship with time. The designer seems to be going through a restless period, one that began with her spring 2023 collection, which she collaged from her textile archive, sometimes using no-sew techniques, into not-for-sale experiments. There might not be much of a market for skirts that don’t make a full circle around the waist, but the sense of spontaneity—of the notion of fashion as basic coverings—was exciting.Continuing her process of rediscovery, Zadeh went through the archives stored at her parent’s house as she designed fall 2023. Now, for spring 2024, she seems exactly where she wants to be, in the middle between what has been and what will be.“When I first started designing in my early twenties, I made a lot of mistakes; when something worked, I felt, ‘Oh wow, I know what people want. When I have the instinct, I go for it.’ And I kept changing things all the time,” she said on a walk-through. “And then I realized, the older I got, that consumers don’t want you to change so fast. People want you to stick.”Based on this observation, the new collection is a blend of remixes (like a cardigan brought back from the brand’s first season) and new pieces. How Zadeh imbues a covetable air of throwaway-chic to “little nothings” pieces like semi-sheer knits, a silk tunic, and ribbed melange tanks remains a mystery, but that she does so is an established fact.One of the heroes of this lineup is a wrap that can be worn as a skirt or a dress that was inspired by a cover-up Zadeh’s mother wore in the ’90s. It’s essentially an easy-peasy scarf-topped skirt that you self-tie. It’s vacation-ready but also has that lived-in Lower East Side cool with which Zadeh’s work has become synonymous. “What I’ve been trying to achieve for so long is this sensibility which I look for a lot…when a garment has spirit in it and it has lightness and delicacy in the way that it’s made.” The MNZ difference is that there is nothing precious about this airy sensibility.Nassir Zadeh named the collection Rush because it was shot and styled post-haste after being released from customs last minute, meaning that she had to cede control to some extent and go with the flow, working within the time available and with the pieces at hand.
In this age of dress-to-impress selfies and ’fit pics, Zadeh’s aesthetic of spontaneity (the lookbook was styled, however hurriedly) reminds us that playing with fashion just for the sake of it still delivers a rush.
17 November 2023
Refuting the adage that you can’t go home again, Maryam Nassir Zadeh shot her fall look book at her parents’ house in Los Angeles. This was a visual articulation of a deeper conceptual process the designer has engaged in, one that’s seen her take stock of her business and life by revisiting the places and things she loves and seeing them afresh.At her spring show, Zadeh cobbled together precious pieces from her vintage textile archive with as little cutting or sewing as possible. It was a risk-taking proposition that related both to the trend for paring things back and to a sort of noninterference method of design. But if she went out on a limb last season, fall found Zadeh on middle ground.“We got inspired by the idea of building a core collection, which we had never done before,” the designer explained. There were not-so-basic keeper pieces aplenty here, from her signature backward pants to leather bombers, greatcoats to kilts, rendered in materials like pinstripe and corduroy. These are items that the designer still finds relevant after all these years and wants her customers to be able to come back to again and again.While going through the clothing archive she stores at her childhood home, Zadeh came across her RISD portfolio and pieces from her earliest collections. The garments and textiles she made back then didn’t just look relevant to her today; they reinforced her desire to get even closer to her work. “I really want to create textiles and make clothing that has a richness of texture and life to it,” she said. And boy, does a ribbon-stuffed wiggle dress deliver joie de vivre! Some of the pieces, like a sash dripping with beads, are whimsical one-offs made using vintage materials; others, like an embellished stretch-lace bodysuit, will go into production. It’d look great with a pair of asymmetric laced leggings that have the special off-ness that defines the brand.In a reflective mood, Zadeh set her own pace this season. Post-lockdown, she mused, we have “a new relationship with the times, and it really has to do with things being fast. I don’t think I have to do what everyone’s doing and be so fast; sometimes doing less is just so much more. That’s where I’m at.” Hence her absence from New York Fashion Week. Going forward Zadeh will present her collections publicly by choice. The nostalgic turn her work has taken is connected to her belief that what you need you can find within yourself.
As she put it: “Some things are just part of you, and some things are where you start, and then even if you go far, you still arrive back to where you began.” Zadeh’s collection might be fragranced by déjà vu, but it has the potential to take you places you haven’t yet been to.
16 March 2023
Maryam Nassir Zadeh began her show notes with the wordwaves,and she was thinking not only about the azure waters lapping on Mediterranean shores (the designer spent part of the summer on the idyllic Greek island Hydra) but also of time.In 2013 Zadeh first dipped her toe into design with accessories and then moved into clothing—and MNZ quickly created a niche in the downtown scene. “What I’m known for is making timeless, elevated basics,” she said after her spring show, which veered from that formula this season. It was a full-circle moment: Zadeh came back to the Sara D. Roosevelt handball court where she had shown before, located just across the street from her studio; the cast and audience were full of friends.History is fluid, so you never know what will remain when you return to a place. That thought is top of mind for New Yorkers who lived through 9/11 and those who are still in the city after the pandemic. In the aftermath of lockdowns, things all over the world still feel a bit undone and tenuous. Zadeh’s collection had that feeling too, but its inspiration came from a sunnier, happier place.The lineup was infused with the freedom of summer dressing—or undressing—the instinctual improvisation of wearing a towel as a sarong, say. Modesty is not a consideration in the MNZ universe, which is body positive and empowering, and that is an extension of how Zadeh lives her life. On vacation, she said, “I was dressing in ways that were like half naked, half covered.” But that’s only part of the story: “I feel like there’s a fusion of the domestic element of my life [as a working mother], but then there’s sort of a tension between that and being free.” The idea of domesticity came through in a literal way; the designer worked with interior textiles like tablecloths and bath towels. Similarly, the idea of finding “space in between” was evident in such garments as half skirts.How these will translate on a rack would be a question, save for the fact that they might not ever land there. Zadeh explained that many of the materials she used have been in her personal collection for decades. Not wanting to cut them up, she worked around them, allowing the textiles to guide the patterns and some no-sew pieces in ways that she feels will lead her in exciting new directions. Thus her reworkings represented a dialogue with fabric and the sum of her past experiences and relationships.
The MNZ boutique has long been home to independent brands—like the upcycling label All-In—which do things differently.It was the lightest pieces that best captured the ephemerality of memory and emphasized the space that exists between the body and the cloth. A polka-dot dress, for example, was the color of sky in the early morning; a yellow woven men’s shirt was tethered by knit cuffs and collars. Layering heavier materials over lighter ones was another way to emphasize the delicacy of the fabrics. Garters and bras added a whiff of the boudoir to the proceedings. A jersey dress with a beautifully shaped scoop neck in front and back was paired with a bra, which by now has fully come out from under. The idea of apron skirts and tying things on is one that is surfacing in many collections. In some ways this harks back to classical precedents and manipulation of material rather than construction. “I wanted to be natural,” Zadeh said, and there’s nothing more so than the human form, which was the designer’s focus this season. What she calls her reworks are works in progress—as is life.
12 September 2022
As with most designers, Maryam Nassir Zadeh saves her more conceptual ideas for her main season runway shows, filling resort with wardrobing concepts that “feel most sincere to my style.” But unlike the rest, Zadeh harmonizes her past and present in her pre-seasons. “Most of what you see is resurrected from collections past,” she says, detailing how camisole tanks, silk blouses, and miniskirts from collections dating all the way to seven years ago are revived and remixed for a new, spirited look.That mix of nostalgia and nowness is Zadeh’s gift. She looks to fashion’s collective past, creating novelty tees that harken to the early aughts and soft shorts that look like gym class uniforms, while still keeping an eye on the current moment. Based in the Lower East Side, she’s able to watch as her friends refresh their wardrobes to reflect how they have lived, sure, but also the way they would like to live next.Here is what makes Zadeh’s resort collection all the more compelling. As hot girl summer evolves into hot girl autumn, winter, and spring, she has found a novel way to shed layers and create clothing that feels skimpy without sacrificing its smarts. From her showroom in Paris she held up a bodysuit that, on the hanger, looked like a teensy scrap of fabric. “This,” she laughs, “I don’t really know how to wear it! But I need it.” The urge to dress is inexorably tied to the urge to live. Zadeh does both beautifully.
27 July 2022
Maryam Nassir Zadeh is obsessed with a towel. It’s not a specific towel, but the idea of a towel, something textural, positive, warm, sun bleached. She’s found favorites at Air BnBs in Kenya and Formentera, occasionally smuggling others out from her favorite hotels around the globe. For the first time, she has made her own towel, worn on the runway by Cole Mohr in an outfit that almost resembles pajamas—save the beautiful leather boots. “He really pulls it off,” says Zadeh backstage.To outsiders, this kind of dialogue and obsession over a towel might sound like something from an Ottessa Moshfegh story. It’s not—but Moshfegh did walk Zadeh’s runway today in a slate rib knit, slitted miniskirt, and black leather scarf. Both women have a shared affinity for character building and quirk; nothing normal happens on an MNZ runway or in a Moshfegh novel.Or maybe both women are able to pick up on the very strange circumstances of a seemingly normal life. Zadeh’s garments are proudly of the anti-fashion movement—somethingLaird Borelli-Persson has been tracking the re-emergence of for months—and her garments are more about reflecting the vast interior lives of the people who wear them.Trying to understand the nuance, to a MNZ first-timer, can be like cracking a code. Here is Susan Cianciolo, the godmother of all Lower East Side style, in a plaid scarf wrapped around her head (“very Susan,” approves Zadeh), and a leather, boxy skirt set (“not Susan at all,” she contrasts). To her and her community, that awkwardness is everything. Putting Drake Burnette in a slender ringer tee and charismatic long pencil skirt means something. Lexie Smith’s sheer butter-colored trousers under a sort of uncanny work dress are intentional; layering coats for Angel Prost mimics Prost’s own magpie style. On the whole, these clothes come with a gentle handfeel, lent by shell buttons on a lichen short sleeve shirt and the Sharpie-drawn logo on a tee.So you see that handing Cole Mohr that towel really matters because it suggests that Mohr, just like the other dozens of people on the MNZ runway, has a life off of it. Amidst a wonky New York season, Zadeh is the rare—and getting rarer!—designer that makes clothing for a legitimate New York City life. (Another candidate, Mike Eckhaus, was in her front row today.) Does it make telling the difference between her models and her audience a little difficult? Yes. But what a great problem for a designer to have.
14 February 2022
The Lower East Side has had a glow-up of late, elevated by buzzy new restaurants and the block party vibes of two pandemic summers. While other neighborhoods emptied out, the LES just felt busier. Maryam Nassir Zadeh was an early adopter; her Norfolk Street store opened in 2008 on a still-lesser-traveled corner of Rivington, just one example of her unerring instincts for cultural and aesthetic shifts.We were at the newly reopened store for today’s show, Zadeh’s first since 2019. Surprisingly, it also marked her first show in the space; she described it as a homecoming. “It was really important for me to have the show at the store, to celebrate that it’s still alive and celebrate the community that has supported us since the beginning,” she said. That spirit was felt both in the audience and the impactful cast, including MNZ regulars like Susan Cianciolo, Paloma Elsesser, and Lili Sumner as well as Zadeh’s husband, Uday Kak, and Andre Walker. It’s worth mentioning that this was Zadeh’s most diverse cast to date, with a rare instance of both female and male curve models.Zadeh’s impulse to go “back to her roots” via the setting was mirrored in the clothes, too. Her early collections were quite minimal, and through the years she’s experimented with bolder colors, prints, silhouettes, and styling. But as life inches towards normalcy, she’s feeling for an aesthetic reset—something cleaner, easier, purer. That doesn’t add up to our standard definition of minimalism; the way she put it was “playful, but restrained.” That odd balance is Zadeh’s signature: Classic-ish button-downs and denim shorts were styled with her cult PVC wedges and glass jewelry, yoga pants were “spiced up” by leather medallion belts, filmy translucent skirts and dresses revealed bright bikinis underneath, and crisp 9-to-5 chinos flared over neon kitten heels. The unlikely pairings and delicate sensuality seemed to reflect how so many women (on the LES and elsewhere) want to dress in 2022: not trendy or overly referential, but not basic; sophisticated, but not stuffy. It’s a modern vision of “femininity” rooted in individuality and curiosity, not overt sex appeal or convention.That said, Zadeh was even more excited about her menswear offering, which grew significantly for spring. The guys in the show wore raw-edged suede shirts, color-blocked polo knits, and raw denim jorts with sharp blazers, often with bits of colored glass strung across the chest.
The impression was unprecious and, like the womenswear, a bit sensual; she felt the knits in particular would bring something new to the men’s market. Still, Zadeh makes a point not to separate garments by “men’s” or “women’s” on her website. Ultimately, all of her garments—from suits to bikinis to see-through minis—will be worn by people of every gender identity.
8 September 2021
Maryam Nassir Zadeh comes at her collections from multiple vantage points: as a designer, as a retailer (her Lower East Side store is set to reopen soon), and as a true lover of clothes. She has an epic personal archive filled with labels she discovered early on—MNZ was one of the first New York stores to sell Jacquemus and Eckhaus Latta—as well as designer treasures and vintage finds she’s collected over the years. As for her brand’s archive, she’s been busy revisiting and editing every piece she’s ever made, plus dozens of prototypes and one-offs, to get it to a place that reflects her tastes today. Post-pandemic, she’s leaning more minimal, but not in a stark or staid way; there’s a delicateness to it, even in the menswear.For resort 2022, she tried on almost every piece she’s kept, one by one, and re-cut the best ones to create the ultimate “curated” MNZ wardrobe. Her past few collections have followed a similar approach, initially due to the constraints of the pandemic; in 2020, her team didn’t have the resources to create brand-new samples with brand-new fabrics. But Zadeh didn’t think that resort would have turned out “better” if it was entirely new stuff. The time and care she put into hand-selecting the clothes—and occasionally redoing them in different colors or fabrics—amounted to a collection heartfelt and personal.Diehard fans might spot a few of her “greatest hits,” but Zadeh and her stylist, Thistle Brown, re-styled each piece so they’re hardly recognizable. Several dresses were transformed into skirts thanks to artful knots or belt bags around the waist, while a neon orange midi dress was shown with a full skirt underneath, sort of like a petticoat. Beyond showing you how to wear the new pieces, Zadeh hopes it will inspire her entire community to get more creative with their MNZ favorites at home. A few looks were styled with bikinis, now a brand signature, or asymmetrical bodysuits in mushroom-y colors. They lent an undone, balletic feeling to the skirts, sort of like a Lower East Side spin on a dancer’s uniform. In this heat—New York’s “real feel” was around 100 degrees when this look book was shot—the concept looked irresistibly breezy, though the truly daring will go for Zadeh’s ultra-ultra-mini skirts in stretchy black cotton.
7 July 2021
In B.C. (before COVID) times, Maryam Nassir Zadeh’s shows were some of the buzziest events at New York Fashion Week. Set in abandoned banks or crumbling Lower East Side parks, the designer typically cast her own stylish, self-assured friends as models, including Hailey Benton Gates, Susan Cianciolo, and Ana Kras. Her shows had a palpable energy, and the clothes had something too; they were arty, thought-provoking, and occasionally pretty weird, but within a few months, you’d see copies everywhere. Zadeh helped define the colorful, mismatched Lower East Side look in the 2010s, which she’s described as “odd elegance.” It continues to influence the market.Still, Zadeh says she’s done her best work in quarantine, and has more or less been off fashion’s radar. She hasn’t created a “runway collection” since spring 2020, and the extended pause gave her the space to reset, refocus, and design closer to her own tastes, without the distractions and noise of a show. Like her recent collections, fall 2021 felt simpler and stripped back, but also sexier. The heat mostly came from a handful of miniskirts (like one in metallic orchid leather, shown with a matching blazer) and backless, thigh-grazing party dresses. A little pleated skirt looked slightly more demure, then Zadeh revealed deep slits cut into each side, which would flare open as you walk.As she often does, Zadeh predicted the miniskirt comeback early on; her spring 2020 show had several of them, including a few so tiny you’d have trouble sitting down. If we weren’t ready then, we’re racing toward a summer of sexy, skimpy fashion and unbridled exuberance. As New York heats up and we “re-emerge,” it’s difficult to imagine girls reaching for prim prairie dresses or anything subdued. Surely they’ll want clothes that feel bolder, happier, lighter—literally and figuratively—and totally unlike the stuff they wore last year.Zadeh is an instinctual and intuitive designer, but she did make one surprise reference: Carrie Bradshaw inSex and the City—the early seasons, filmed at the turn of the 2000s. You can glimpseSATC’s protagonist in the asymmetrical party dresses, vibrant accessories, and the plucky flower pin adorning a slip. Zadeh’s interest was less in the character or TV show and more in the balance of no-frills minimalism and “spice ups,” as she put it.
In our loungewear moment, it was easy to picture Carrie (and many of Zadeh’s customers) in the opening look: a cobalt knit set paired not with sneakers, but block-heel mules.
9 March 2021
Maryam Nassir Zadeh has never appeared in her look books, but sometimes a model is styled so clearly in her image that you feel like you’re catching a glimpse of the designer. For spring 2021, that double-take came in the form of a look combining roomy khakis, an unbuttoned oxford, a bikini top, and an oversized leather bomber. It wasn’t far from what Zadeh was wearing in her Norfolk Street store to walk through this collection; she’s been feeling a more relaxed, unprecious look these days, usually involving a men’s button-down, silver jewelry, and her dad’s vintage leather jacket. It’s an easy, just-odd-enough mix that feels right for the moment and will resonate with women who, like Zadeh, can’t get excited about fuss and flou.Surely there are men who want that, too—vintage-tinged treasures and refined basics, sans logos or eye-watering price tags. Zadeh has always been a woman who wears menswear, but spring 2021 marks her first-ever men’s capsule. She explained that she’s long been inspired by the men in her life—her father, boyfriends, husband, and longtime stylist Thistle Brown, whom she worked with here—and dreamed of making men’s clothes for years. The uncertainty of the pandemic made her stop waiting for the “right” moment. The debut line is fundamentally MNZ—the tweaked proportions, soft fabrics, and touches of sensuality—but without the occasional metallic flash or neon blazer of her women’s line. It’s quiet, almost delicate menswear, the kind you’d like to swipe from your boyfriend’s closet and keep forever. That was intentional, of course: Zadeh designed it with guys in mind, but also her close female friends. What kind of shirt or pant or jean could live in both closets?All to say, Zadeh is wisely marketing the line as unisex. A few pieces were shown on both her female and male models to drive the message home: She wore the hip-slung pleated khakis with a baby tee and shell bra; he wore them with a beige button-down and sandals. Both wore the V-neck sweater vests with nothing underneath: her with an ultra-mini mini, him with those hero pants. And the enveloping leather jackets were tossed over jeans and lace dresses alike. Buttery-soft, free of hardware, and perfectly anonymous, they might be the ultimate investment piece of 2021. The best part: You can split the cost with your partner.
16 October 2020
Maryam Nassir Zadeh didn’t cut a single new garment for resort. Instead, she put together a “hand-picked” collection of items from the past, reimagined and recontextualized for now. Years and seasons collapse in many of the looks: A white button-down from fall 2020 was styled with an ivory leather skirt from spring 2020; a pair of striped shorts circa spring 2019 were paired with a fall 2020 knee-high boot, redone here with a black lace shaft. Bikinis and strappy bras, often styled alone as tops—a look New York women have replicated during this summer’s heatwave—nodded to her swim-heavy spring 2018 show.Zadeh resurrected these items not just because they deserve a second look or feel newly relevant, but also because it seemed like a more sustainable way of doing things. In their walk down memory lane, Zadeh and her team only chose pieces they knew they had enough leftover fabric to make. They didn’t want to invest in making new patterns or ordering silks and wools from Italy: “It isn’t even just about sustainability in recycled materials, it’s about sustainability of time,” Zadeh said on a call from Los Angeles. “We never have enough time to order new fabrics from Italy, and the turnaround times [between collections] are so short.”Zadeh didn’t predict the pandemic, but she was feeling uneasy about the industry’s speed and rigid calendar back in February, when she skipped New York Fashion Week to attend a close friend’s wedding in Africa. Plenty of designers would have sacrificed the life event, not the media attention and page views. But stepping back gave Zadeh an opportunity to strip away what felt non-essential and imbue a more personal touch in the clothes. The results were simpler, but also a lot closer to Zadeh’s own nuanced style.Resort was a bigger step in that direction, and something of a microcosm of the designer’s current obsessions. Her sensitivity to what’s “in the air” means we’ll soon be obsessed, too. On the list are: shorter hemlines, colorful silk button-downs, men’s shirts and tailoring, anything lace, and embellished belts, styled here as “spice ups” on otherwise simple jersey dresses. “There’s a real personality and style to the collection,” Zadeh said. “It’s easy and wearable, but still special, because we’re mixing these strong basics with novelty accessories.” In the past, Zadeh has described that MNZ balance as “odd elegance.” That still rings true, but its becoming cleaner and more casual, even tomboyish, of late.
“I’m feeling less ‘pretty,’ and more of a timeless, cool, and relaxed look.”MNZ obsessives will indeed see resort as a grab-bag of timeless, cool, and relaxed outfit ideas, especially if they got any of these pieces the first time around. More broadly, though, it’s a collection that feels connected to what’s happening in the world and how women want to dress for these uncertain times. It’s neither fussy nor shapeless; the two poles of “where fashion is going”—fantasy or extremehygge—seem illogical to Zadeh. “There has to be some sort of blend in the middle,” she said. “I love a really special, crazy piece, but if it’s too crazy, how often are you going to wear it? I just want to fall in love with something. I’m curious to see what happens next.”
6 August 2020
Maryam Nassir Zadeh was one of several designers who didn’t have a show at New York Fashion Week this season; others included Ralph Lauren, Phillip Lim, and Lou Dallas. The break proved refreshing for Zadeh. The stress and expense of planning a show was likely a factor, but it was mostly a personal choice: A dear friend was getting married in Africa, and she couldn’t fathom not being there. “For certain people in your life, these are the moments you can’t miss,” Zadeh said.That her response—sensitive, human—registered as a surprise says a lot about the rigid structure of the fashion calendar. For most of us, the shows are a fixed, unyielding constant in our lives: We plan everything around them, and the general feeling is that attending a wedding, getting sick, or having a personal problem is simply not an option. But that may be fading as designers like Zadeh question the two-shows-per-year diktat and rethink how they present their collections. Is the runway the “best way”? Why not mix it up from time to time?Zadeh was still a little nervous about how her fans, editors, and buyers would react, but was so happy with the collection that it outweighed her concerns. “It sort of makes me wish people could see it in a show!” she said with a laugh. The irony, of course, is that the clothes turned out this way because she knew they wouldn’t have to parade down a catwalk. She designed these clothes in the context of how women will wear them, not how they’ll appear in runway photos.That was one of the bigger takeaways here: that Zadeh wanted to get back to the clothes, with none of the pressure of making things that “live up to” the runway (i.e. overcomplicated, over-styled stuff that often doesn’t even get produced). She looked to some of her early collections, which leaned quite minimal, for inspiration, alighting on menswear tailoring and twisted bourgeois items like pleated miniskirts and leather-trimmed sweaters. She also brought back a few of her favorite pieces, like a midiskirt and a zip-up bomber jacket, and she’s getting back into reworked denim again, too. On the phone from Africa, she noted that, coincidentally, the jeans patched with multicolored circles had a bit of an African feeling to them, ditto the beaded jewelry, leather cord belts, and tasseled bags.Zadeh’s focused, streamlined approach to this collection made it memorable in a different way than the tinsel dresses and mashed-up prints of seasons’ past, and felt more in line with her own style.
That’s how the MNZ line began, after all: an extension of her highly specific, often ahead-of-the-trends taste. Lately, she’s been feeling for items with longevity, usually in the form of vintage tailoring or quite classic pieces, like button-downs and midiskirts. She isn’t the only designer reviving those codes, but for her audience, it will be more of a pivot. Here, those items were still styled in the characteristically quirky, MNZ-ish way: with socks and sandals, blouses single-buttoned over no bra, jeans scrunched into knee-high boots. If some of the details are difficult to make out in these artful, intentionally-blurred photos by Sharna Osborne, it only emphasizes that these aren’t difficult clothes you need to zoom in on and analyze. Sometimes it’s the simplest stuff that yields the most creative and covetable results.
26 February 2020
Maryam Nassir Zadeh staged her Spring 2020 show on a sunken court in Sara D. Roosevelt Park, also known as the strip of land between Forsyth and Christie Streets on the Lower East Side. On a typical Monday afternoon you’d find kids playing bike polo or a group of ladies practicing tai chi; instead, editors sat on folding chairs while Susan Cianciolo, Nane Feist, and Lili Sumner glided past in neon bikinis, loose cargo pants, and ultramini miniskirts. This wasn’t a “guerrilla show” like Zadeh’s Spring 2018 outing on the East River track, but there was a similar feeling of interrupting daily life. A few guys continued to kick a soccer ball on the opposite side of the park, while unsuspecting pedestrians paused to watch from the sidewalk. (OneVogueeditor who got there at the last minute simply found an empty park bench; the views were more or less the same.)Zadeh’s show has become one of New York Fashion Week’s can’t-miss events, so some guests were probably wondering why she hasn’t upgraded to a slicker venue yet. But the distinctly unrefined setting of cracked asphalt is part of the MNZ story, a reminder that she’s still one of downtown New York’s O.G. talents; seeing this collection at Spring Studios simply wouldn’t compute. Her models looked right at home in the fresh LES air, probably because they actually were.After the show, Zadeh cited her usual stream-of-consciousness references: menswear, raves, safari suits, the beach, and John Cassavetes films, plus new touches of romance via ruffles and lace (she even closed with a bride in white ruched satin, a cheeky nod to traditional couture shows). Those concepts sound simple enough, but the MNZ way is to make them certifiably strange. Zadeh explained that she didn’t want her floral prints to reference blooms you’d find in a garden—instead they were more akin to underwater plants. Her signature glass jewelry was shaped like Posidonia, a type of seagrass that creates so much oxygen it’s considered the lungs of the Mediterranean. Zadeh is happiest by the water; she recently returned from Formentera, Spain, and likes to wear swimsuits as “real clothes,” reflected in the string bikinis-as-bras in the show. She had late-night beach parties in mind when she designed the floaty patchwork skirts and up-to-there minis, but it’s the latter that felt truly surprising. After years of midi and floor-skimming hemlines, she wanted something crazy-short (then balanced it out with a blousy button-down).
It’s one of those things that just suddenly, inexplicablylooksright, and if Zadeh’s feeling it, you can bet other women will soon enough.
9 September 2019
Maryam Nassir Zadeh’s shows have become a highlight of New York Fashion Week, both for its diverse casts (many of the models are Zadeh’s real-life friends, among them Susan Cianciolo and Hailey Benton Gates) and her idiosyncratic mash-ups. A single look on the Fall 2019 runway included a blue leopard coat on top of a crinkly skirt over jogger sweatpants; another teamed a fringed sweatshirt with a plaid pencil skirt, a leopard belt, and zebra-striped boots. The reason it all works—at least, if that’s the look you’re going for—is because the pieces themselves are so simple. The silhouettes are almost rudimentary (a straight-fitting, almost matronly skirt; a sheath dress; a three-button jacket, et cetera) to leave room for endless mixing and matching. Look no further than Zadeh’s own Instagram for proof that those simple pieces are the building blocks of eclectic style: She just wore her go-to pleated camel midiskirt with a matching bra top in the South of France, jazzed up with lots of jewelry and an orange bag. There wasn’t anything complicated or even groundbreaking about the look, yet to the 6,000 people who liked the photo, it struck a chord. (In the selfie era, after all, nothing is more aspirational than true personal style.)Zadeh’s Resort collections tend to be a lot more straightforward than her ready-to-wear shows and are thus a reminder of those building blocks. This season, she took the opportunity to bring a few back from the recent past: The aforementioned pleated skirt was reissued here in lime green; a square-neck, puffed-sleeve cotton dress from Spring 2018 returned in solid white and black; and a painterly island motif in shades of yellow and cobalt was reprinted from Spring 2017. It captured the sultry, vaguely Mediterranean mood Zadeh was going for—Resort traditionally being a season for “takeaway” vacation clothes—but there’s always been a sense of warmth and earthiness to her line. On that note, her team reported that a strappy, completely-backless tank was one of the best sellers at Paris market—behold, the ultimate vacation top!—but she made a strong case for matching sets you can wear in the city, too. There were a few neon slip dresses with tie-front blouses layered on top; a checkered pant was shown with a matching tailored vest; and Zadeh included a version of the look she’s been sporting: a scalloped bra and midiskirt, both in taupe linen.
Styled with a plaid bomber jacket, the full look felt like something a New York girl might like to wear right now.
2 July 2019
Backstage after a Maryam Nassir Zadeh show, a reviewer becomes accustomed to getting interrupted (politely) by the designer’s friends and fans who can’t wait to say hi and give her a hug. You can practically see the wish lists materializing over their heads as they rave about the collection; perhaps it’s because the clothes are modeled on dynamic, diverse women who actually look like them (including Susan Cianciolo, Paloma Elsesser, and Hailey Benton Gates), or maybe it’s because the show gives them a dozen new ideas for mixing pieces that shouldn’t work together but somehow do. Consider today’s fleece zip-up cinched with a low-slung belt over a pleated skirt; the electric blue leopard coat over a crinkly silk skirt and jogger sweats; the fringed and beaded sweater tucked into an iridescent plaid pencil skirt and zebra-striped boots. The effect was of a grab-and-go, can’t-stop-to-check-the-mirror process of getting dressed, which ultimately comes across as brazen confidence; you imagine a woman so comfortable with her style she never second-guesses herself. Zadeh called it “hand-picked dressing, like when you’re scouring for vintage finds and putting together this mix of different elements.”She’s built a cult around that high-low, rules-are-for-squares mentality. On one hand, you could say it’s all just a mash-up of clothes that intentionally don’t make sense. But the bigger picture is that Zadeh has given women permission to dress intuitively and maybe to fuck things up a little. In a world of carefully crafted Instagram outfits and brands that tout minimalism to the point of groupthink—All you need are these three items, and you’ll never shop again!—you find yourself craving a little “oddness,” as Zadeh puts it. A picture-perfect look is flat and lifeless; her models in Technicolor blouses, python boots, and schoolgirl skirts, on the other hand, look like the creative, self-possessed women you want to be.Where does it all come from, you ask? The references Zadeh listed read like a stream of consciousness: “It’s primitive nomad [meets] Annie Hall, harlequin watercolors, working women, elements of safari . . . and fashion at the turn of the century, when women started to introduce sports into their wardrobes.” In simpler terms: The show began with natural, vaguely earthy looks and ended with neon, almost clownish dresses, puffers, and underpinnings.
(That’s where the harlequin thing came in; strangely, Dior and Givenchy were on the same wavelength forcouture.)Many of those looks were meant to be challenging, but Zadeh pointed out that the pieces themselves were actually quite “normal.” They were button-downs, midi skirts, and pegged trousers, just in unexpected materials and colors. “The shapes are really timeless, but the fabrications are what make them special,” she said. “My background is in textiles, so I’m always looking for materials that feel new and are hard to find.”
7 February 2019
Maryam Nassir Zadeh’s show closed with a bikini. An itsy-bitsy, zebra-striped triangle bikini. It wasn’t the only swimsuit on the runway, either; at least eight looks included a bandeau, maillot, or wraparound triangle top. It might sound strange for a ready-to-wear show in New York, but Zadeh’s collections tend to reflect her own style and instincts. Anyone who follows the designer on Instagram will know she spent most of the summer wearing strapless bikini tops and high-waisted circle skirts on vacation in Italy, Greece, and Spain (Look 15 is a pretty spot-on example). “I’m really into wearing swimwear with regular clothes,” she said after the show. “My collection is always so much about my life, and [while] I’m obsessed with New York and the speed and intensity of the city, it’s also such a deep part of my life to go away and travel. So I loved the idea of fusing both of those worlds.”The idea of bringing the ease and warmth of our “vacation selves” into the everyday has been an emerging theme this week. Wearing a swimsuit that reminds you of happier times in Playa del Carmen is one way to get there. Styled with a skirt or linen shorts, the look is essentially the same as a cotton crop top or bodysuit, but there’s always going to be something funny about wearing swimsuit nylon on the street. That off-ness and sense of humor is obviously a big part of Zadeh’s charm. In several cases, a zebra bandeau or ruffled triangle top was shown under a button-down, a sultry twist on something quite preppy, and Susan Cianciolo modeled a more idiosyncratic take: an animal-print maillot, white pumps, and an oversize trench.As for the “regular” clothing, Zadeh referred to the vibe as “acid Mediterranean,” or the juxtaposition of something organic with the surreal. That mostly came down to offbeat styling; the first look, for instance, combined a crochet bodysuit with bike shorts and sparkly heels. The earth-toned suits, button-front midi skirts, and ribbed knits had a natural, stripped-down feeling offset by moments of vibrancy, like a retina-searing lime dress or a metallic plaid jacket. “I love women who are really artful—it’s a theme in my work,” Zadeh said. “I like when girls dress in a spontaneous way, throwing something on with a beautiful lip color. That’s what inspires me—that effortless collage.”Zadeh surrounds herself with those artful, inspiring women, many of whom were on the runway today (Hailey Benton Gates, Ana Kraš, and Cianciolo among them).
It’s difficult to imagine her brand without that close-knit community; they’re her friends, muses, and sometimes collaborators, and more importantly, they live in her clothes every day, not just on special occasions or during Fashion Week. It isn’t far-off to assume they’re who Zadeh is really designing for.She gets extra points for today’s venue, a former bank directly above the Canal Street subway station. Most runway shows end with a string of luxury sedans waiting for A-list clients and editors in stilettos, but the MNZ girl gang is happily distanced from that world. Her models and friends headed straight for the northbound N/Q/R train, lavender lipstick and all.
12 September 2018
Maryam Nassir Zadeh just designed her first Resort collection, and for superfans, it will feel like a game of trivia. In lieu of the holographic dresses and embellished pieces she puts on the runway, this lineup was comprised of her greatest hits over the years: There’s the puff-sleeved top from Spring 2018, reimagined here in powder blue polka dots; Spring 2017’s drop-waist midi skirt, now in a radiant shade of neon pink; the button-front silk bustier dress from Spring 2015, whipped up in a mini lipstick print Zadeh developed many years back; and her cultish PVC wedges in cerulean, clementine, and glittery pink. Those clear-strap wedges are so popular, in fact, that Zadeh made a few little-sister styles, also in PVC, like a transparent loafer and a sparkly two-inch mule. MNZ girls will find them a bit easier to wear on hectic days running around the city. There were shimmery PVC bags and belts, too, and more of the blown-glass jewelry we saw in her Spring 2018 show (a collaboration withGennaro Pepe).Back to the clothes: It’s worth noting that Resort collections typically get a bad rap for including repeats or just simpler stuff that’s guaranteed to sell. For that reason, some women might be a little disappointed to not find anything particularly weird or surprising here (Fall’s tinfoil dress comes to mind again). But Zadeh’s first go at Resort was more clever than meets the eye. Not only were the silhouettes borrowed from prior seasons, but every single piece was made with leftover fabrics from those collections, too. It seems like a no-brainer way to reduce waste in your business—we’re all aware of fashion’s mounting sustainability problems—but we rarely hear other designers talking about this (at least, not in Zadeh’s market). She tends to move the needle as far as trends are concerned; here’s hoping the same is true of her new decision to recycle and repurpose her materials.
2 July 2018
The look of 2018 is one of arty, offbeat minimalism, but Maryam Nassir Zadeh got there before we really knew what to call it. She almost has a sixth sense for knowing how cool, intellectual women want to look and feel; last season, she summed it up as “odd elegance.” For Fall 2018, that meant quite simple pieces—slinky knits, cropped trousers, prairie dresses, leather jackets—put together in patently odd ways. She layered a sari top over a sweater dress, styled comfy joggers with a boxy blazer, and mixed acid-green pants with Western boots. The contrasts felt spontaneous and confident—and undeniably provocative. She called it “handpicking dressing.”Backstage, she spoke about dualities: hard and soft, light and dark, masculine and feminine. The masculine part came through in the old-school tailoring fabrics: tweeds, corduroy, houndstooths, all in dusty shades of brown. Zadeh called them “nostalgic,” but in contrast, the female elements were “electric, vibrant, fluid, sexy, but strong.” There’s a metaphor in there. The MNZ woman is no doubt a feminist, and might wear a “menswear-inspired blazer,” but not the way a man might like her to.As for the quirky, seductively strange mood she’s become known for—seen best in the iridescent prairie dress, metallic ginghams, and the models’ neon eyeliner—Zadeh chalked it up to her own art school days when she studied textile design. “This artiness goes really deep to my roots,” she said. “There were so many years when I didn’t really use those skills, when I was doing other things and was able to get recognized for my shoes and the store. But talking about the soul and the essence here—that’s my true self.” She pointed out the embellished shoes, glittery bags, and glass jewelry (including necklaces shaped like human vertebrae, a subtly creepy touch). They’re “punctuations” that can transform an otherwise minimal look, be it a sleek dress or jeans and a T-shirt. “There’s so much minimalism out there, and I’m such a fan of minimalism,” she said. “But people copy each other so much.” (To be fair, Zadeh took at least one cue directly from Mary McFadden here.) “So to make something your own and make it personal with something from the heart, with a unique touch,” she continued, “that’s authentic. It tells a story.”
15 February 2018
On a picture-perfect afternoon in downtown Manhattan,Maryam Nassir Zadehstaged a fashion show on the East River Park track. It was about as far as you could get (both physically and atmospherically) from last season’s event at the Guggenheim Museum. Guests were seated on slick bleachers, and minutes before the models walked out, unknowing runners were still taking laps. Make no mistake, this was a planned-out, highly orchestrated affair, right down to the surprise performer—none other than Solange Knowles. But it still felt spontaneous, and that’s how it looked to passersby, too; as editors made their way across the highway after the show, a boy’s soccer team kept asking what just happened.Zadeh lucked out with the breezy 75-degree weather, but she also chose the track because it’s near and dear to her. A few years ago, she got back into running, explaining that it’s become her form of meditation. Instead of shutting down the park, she liked the idea of a surprise show, and was actually hoping there’d be more unsuspecting runners there. She likened them to symbols of life’s unpredictability: “You have to succumb to what happens,” she said.Like Zadeh’s choice of location, the clothes were deeply personal, too. She described each look as “trapping a moment in time”—one was inspired by her RISD days, while another riffed on her love for the ’50s—but the bigger picture was that she’s moving away from the minimalism of past seasons. Spring ’18 had a wilder, more off-beat vibe, which mirrored how her own look (and that of her must-visit store) has changed. There were plenty of classic MNZ-isms, like ruffled dresses, swimwear-as-daywear, and her popular block-heeled sandals, but the girly stuff was new: puff-sleeved dresses, rhinestones, gingham checks. Color is also an important part of the MNZ equation, and the neon pink and lime felt like a jolt of good energy.Still, the cult-adored (and much copied) MNZ look is difficult to put into words. It’s vibrant, arty, charming . . . sort of unsexy-on-purpose . . . and just a little bit strange. Zadeh calls it “odd elegance.” The key, of course, is to never look like you’re overthinking it, and that’s where the MNZ girl gang comes in. Many of Zadeh’s stylish friends—including Susan Cianciolo, Camilla Deterre, Mari Giudicelli, Ana Kraš, and Kozue Akimoto—walked in the show, and effectively showed everyone how it’s done.
12 September 2017
Maryam Nassir Zadeh’s line is only a few years old, but her clothes and shoes have already developed such a cult following it’s no surprise that this season found Zadeh both expanding her brand (into bags and belts) and staging her first runway show. The funny thing is, it’s hard to say why, exactly, Zadeh has engaged the passions of her devoted fans. Aside from her much-imitated minimalist footwear, it’s not as though Zadeh has some particular item or category of items that her clientele looks to her for; her ready-to-wear collections have been quite varied, comprised of simple pieces and highly idiosyncratic ones, and the range of garments always seems dictated more by instinct than by any master strategy.The best answer to the mystery of Zadeh’s appeal is that her devotees are seeking out her brand’s highly specific, hard-to-describe tone. There’s a signature placidity to every Zadeh collection, the new one she showed today being no exception. Zadeh is a fine colorist, who can inject hits of acid or supersaturated color into her palette without disturbing her serene tone; this afternoon’s outing, for instance, was dominated by neutrals dark and light, but also featured bolts of vivid orange, and a natty wool check limbed by neon pink. Likewise, Zadeh knows how to charge her silhouettes with some offbeat-ness, or introduce a disruptive detail or print, without entering that misbegotten realm of the “quirky.” Zadeh’s dress here with a poufy asymmetric color walked right up to that line, as did trousers with one leg check, one leg solid. But as ever with this designer, a certain discipline prevailed: While she may toe the quirky line, she never crosses it.If anything, this collection stayed too far away from that line. It may be that catwalk presentations demand a higher drama quotient than the looks Zadeh sent along her circular runway set up in a theater in the basement of the Guggenheim, but most of these clothes came across as a little too circumspect. The colorful items sang—Zadeh layered her colors in lovely, painterly ways—and a few of the fine details, like the topstitching on a dress, managed to pop. In general, though, these seemed garments meant to be seen up close, or better yet, lived in a bit, so that the little refinements and expertly chosen materials could be fully appreciated. What Zadeh did convey, though, was that tone—a touch dreamy, but nevertheless confident and adult.
It’s hard to characterize that unique Maryam Nassir Zadeh brand proposition, at any rate not precisely or pithily, but today it was patently there. In spades.
13 February 2017
Maryam Nassir Zadehmight take the cake for most joyous presentation ofNew York Fashion Week. For her in-house line’s schedule debut after long showing on an appointment-only basis, the well-loved downtown fixture took over the West Village’s Greenspon gallery for a jam-packed affair featuring a cast of her close friends and muses, among them Аna Kraš, Mari Giudicelli, Camilla Deterre, and Susan Cianciolo. They sat, along with others of Zadeh’s chic coterie, at a long table piled messily with fruits and vegetables and a Mediterranean-inflected spread of ceramics. Band In India played a live set at the far end of the space.Even considering the pretty unorthodox tack she took in showing her Spring collection, the most surprising element of the mise-en-scène came when models began smashing pitchers, plates, and vases on the floor. It commenced without warning and soon escalated, as some leapt up onto the table, pitching pieces from as high as they could lift their arms for an even more dramatic effect. Zadeh was raising a glass, metaphorically and literally, to the success she’s reached with her shop and eponymous line, and the creatives she’s surrounded herself with. The gleeful breaking of pottery, the designer said, nodded to an Iranian belief that the breaking of a glass warded off the evil eye; it served, too, as an expression of spontaneity, of rolling with whatever life throws at you.As for the clothes themselves, Zadeh was inspired by Ibiza in the ’70s, a fact that was palpable mostly in her palette. Sandy tones, washed-out blues, and pale yellows lent the offering a beachy feel, accented by doses of poppy red. If the loose ruffles on midi skirts felt feminine, it was in the breeziest of ways. Meanwhile, the boxy dresses and zip-front jackets will delight the more tomboyish MNZ client. The lone pattern here had plenty of pow to it: a riotous, even splashy, number that mirrored the presentation’s tablescape, printed with baguettes, vases, and fish. Zadeh aptly described it as “poignant.”Sheer layers have recently become something of a staple offering from the brand; some of Zadeh’s models sported transparent, airy skirts and tops layered with her swimwear. The effect was unfussily romantic, and it was easy to see those pieces pairing well with the designer’s program of reworked vintage denim, which was expanded this season after a strong response from her shoppers.
Sure to command a similarly fast following: the first of MNZ’s forthcoming handbag collection. A tote in springy green woven leather, it was a stunner.
15 September 2016
Maryam Nassir Zadehhas a knack for bringing out the aspirational side of a person with her Lower East Side oasis of a store and in-house line—and chic personal style to match. A certain kind of effortless, offbeat sophistication has become synonymous with her brand. Inspired by a handful of iconic beauties, she produced a Fall lineup for the woman a lot of us wouldn’t mind being. Indeed, it was one of the label’s most persuasive offerings to date.Among Zadeh’s muses were Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, Isabelle Adjani, and Lauren Hutton. Riffing on their respective aesthetics—the spare, immaculate WASP, the heady Euro sophisticate, the playful all-American—she married those qualities with touches of the ’70s and ’80s. Fashion has embraced those decades full throttle, but Zadeh is taking a nicely understated tack. Woody Allen women, those ofInteriorsin particular, were another point of reference, lending the collection plenty in the way of lush neutrals. They came punctuated by a handful of luxe flourishes: luminous, metallic leathers, periwinkle faux fur, and even orchid-hued astrakhan. Print is a new frontier that Zadeh is charting to winning results, with an abstract leaf pattern and big, sweetly off-kilter polka dots.The designer’s deconstructed denim, which made its debut last season, has multiplied. Here there was a terrific pencil skirt, as well as patched 501-style pairs of jeans destined to be popular. They’ll pair equally well with Zadeh’s Victorian-inspired organza tops or a ladylike, tie-neck blouse in acid green.
25 March 2016
Summer may feel like a distant memory now, obscured by the fracas of fashion month, but the season came to vivid life in Maryam Nassir Zadeh’s latest offering. The designer imagined it as a series of distinct, personal chapters. The first was bright, open, and inspirational, colored by the time she spent traveling with her family in Italy; a heady vision of days in Palermo, Rome, Puglia, and Capri. But vacations always end—a second chapter told the story of returning to New York’s harsher, often tumultuous realities. Zadeh’s denouement lands somewhere in the middle: grounded in a life at home, and informed by the perspective of time abroad.The designer’s Spring lineup was an organic expression of those ideas, not too beholden to plot. There is a certain intimacy that seems to mark Zadeh’s clothes—they’re both familiar and uncanny. Take the gentle volume of a sculptural metallic organza bomber or crisp poplin dresses, which came unexpectedly tied, halterlike, at the neck. Ensembles were alternate strokes retro-beachy and rustic; likewise in palette, pops of lime and cherry red drew a sharp contrast to shades of blush and gold that recalled the gessoed walls of Zadeh’s summer travels—a lovely dissonance.Still, for many MNZ shoppers, the biggest news here will be the exciting trials in reworked denim. A pair of pants, patchworked in varying washes from cornflower on up to indigo, will be a sure sellout, ditto a softly fraying jacket made from a pair of jeans.
22 October 2015
Killer taste is always in style, and Maryam Nassir Zadeh's got it in genre-spanning spades. It's what sets her eponymous Lower East Side boutique apart, cementing it as a favorite of smartly dressed downtown types—a handful of whom you'll find in Zadeh's new lookbook. Her in-house line, launched in 2013, has a distinct wit and off-kilter elegance. "Classic, but not conservative," is how she described it. For Fall her wide-ranging, arty fodder included the Mediterranean; joy and movement; the arts, specifically as they relate to women—i.e., a snap of Charlotte Rampling, camera in hand; '60s Pop sensibilities; hearty doses of the '80s and '90s; curves and round forms; and all-American, sun-soaked school days. It sounds like a cornucopia of ideas, but Zadeh pared them back to their barest essence and came out of it with a pragmatic, versatile offering. Plenty of items bore retro touches, but with an edge that kept them planted firmly on this side of the millennium. Take a buttery leather peacoat, familiar enough but for its uncanny shade of blush/putty/taupe. Pert cardigans bore inset stripes of transparent cellulose, a wonderfully weird concept that's sure to charm the MNZ customer. Zadeh appreciates the power of staple pieces; one of the collection's quieter coups came in the form of the brand's first tee—a high crewneck number that was dead-on Ali MacGraw.
18 March 2015
Everything that Maryam Nassirzadeh does is impeccably curated. Since 2008, her namesake boutique and showroom on the Lower East Side have become pillars for in-the-know fashion fans and indie designers. As someone who spends a lot of time around fantastic clothes, MNZ knew exactly what she wanted to do when she launched an in-house line last year. Much like her personal style, the clothes are easy yet artful and timelessly modern. Spring's clingy little cardigans and button-front sundresses, for example, are the kinds of quintessential pieces you'll pass down to the next generation. Those carefully considered basics mixed in seamlessly with some of the lineup's more directional looks, including utilitarian jumpsuits, leather "artist smocks," and structured wide-leg trousers, which popped in unexpected hues like safety orange or Yves Klein blue.Elsewhere, the designer channeled a bookish intellectual vibe with a tailored houndstooth skirtsuit that was anything but conservative when layered over a skimpy bikini top. Completing the effect was Nassirzadeh's footwear range—which reportedly accounts for about half of her business. The stacked-heel mules are perfect, practical, and priced to sell. To accompany the new collection, Nassirzadeh created an evocative video (inspired by Eric Rohmer's 1970 film,Claire's Knee) featuring three of her favorite muses on a country holiday. "I love the idea of women coming from an urban background and entering more of a resort setting. They have different personalities and different styles that complement each other," she said.
8 October 2014