Nehera (Q3484)
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Nehera is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Nehera |
Nehera is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Theme-wise, Nehera’s spring collection flowed on from resort. Ladislav Zdút was focused on the Brutalist fountains that dot Bratislava’s cityscape. The concrete used to build them was represented in a custom shade of gray, used for a sheer organza pantsuit with its lining stripes revealed. The long tendrils of fountain water inspired long, narrow silhouettes: see a maxi dress made using three types of material with a black top and pleated ivory skirt. The most literal take on these timeworn edifices was a print that replicated a crack on the stone of the company’s building. The collection was called Sediments of Time.Inspiration is often best extracted, and it was the wardrobe building pieces in this offering that most impressed, such as drapey pants with a slit detail at the hem, and some great denim. A pair of jeans had a fringed side seam, so one could slip into a raw-hemmed denim top much in the way a letter slides into an envelope. Like most brands, Nehera got a bit athletic this spring, adding sports stitching to jersey pieces that were substantial to the point of almost being heavy. At times, the use of multiple fabrics in a single garment felt fussy; more intriguing were the sheer/opaque balances. As light as a French meringue, and as mouth-watering, were a series of puffy balloon tops and skirts, to be worn or as layering pieces. Maybe air is the next element the brand should explore, having splashed around in fountains for a couple of seasons now.
26 September 2024
“We have been asked to do menswear by our customers or by our friends for years,” said Ladislav Zdút, announcing that at long last the brand has yielded to those entreaties. Like the women’s resort 2025 collection, the starting point was Nehera’s hometown of Bratislava; particularly its Brutalist architecture. Zdút explained that built into the planning of the city’s imposing communist housing and office blocks was a small percentage of funds for public art, often used fountains, which served as gathering places and softened the severe landscape. The contrast between hard (structure, tailoring) and fluidity (inspired by water and achieved through drapery) wass this collection’s main conceit as well as a recurring brand theme. Playing on the idea of the Brutalists’ preferred material, concrete, the team made use of a malfilé-silk suiting fabric resembling its stony, gray color. The men’s spring 2025 and women’s resort 2025 collections share the same theme, but the former was more edited and skewed a bit more casual. It also played up fluid silhouettes in a way that made quite a splash.
3 June 2024
Brutalist architecture, which seems to be having a renaissance, plays an important supporting role in Nehera’s 2025 resort collection. The lineup was inspired by the brand’s home city of Bratislava, specifically its fountains, one of which serves as the background of the lookbook images. As creative head Ladislav Zdút explained on a call, built into the planning of the city’s imposing communist housing and office blocks was a small percentage of funds for public art. This often took the form of fountains, which served as gathering places and softened the severe landscape. The contrast between hardness (structure, tailoring) and fluidity (inspired by water and achieved through drapery) was this outing’s main conceit, as well as a recurring brand theme.This collection is consistent, but delivers few surprises. Its flatness likely has something to do with a drab color palette only occasionally enlivened by a squeeze of tart neon lemon. Dyed denim in deep khaki or mocha added welcome shots of saturated color to the collection. Look 34, a roomy bomber with matching pleated pants, wonderfully balanced sartorialism and sport. Also of interest were the cocoon shapes throughout, as on a shaped bias-cut skirt. The curved shoulder on look 10 created something like a rounded bubble back. Playing on the idea of the Brutalists’ preferred material, concrete, the team made use of a malfilé-silk suiting fabric resembling its stony, gray color.The men’s looks here were not just for show; at the request of customers and friends, the brand is building out its offering to include menswear, debuting for spring 2025. The designs followed the same theme as women’s resort 2025, but the collection was more edited and skewed a bit more casual. Fluidity was played up for men in a way that made quite a splash.
3 June 2024
Nehera’s fall collection, which bookended theone preceding it, represented a progression from ominous thunder clouds straight into the eye of the squall. Ladislav Zdút identified the two sources stirring up this tempest as the AI revolution and the current state of global politics. Bratislava, where Nehera is based, is about 600 miles from Kyiv. Moreover, noted the company head on a call, “in more than 80 countries this year there will be elections, and quite often we are expecting that the populists are going to win.” He sees turbulence ahead.Having taken all of this into account, the team, informed by AI errors and glitches, continued to shake things up in a humorous, subtle and attractive ways. Exemplifying their “upside down principle” was, explained Zdút, a jacket with one lapel where it belongs and another extending from the hem of a coat. Another technique that reappeared throughout the line up was “shifted, or blown-away seams,” which could be seen on the puffer (look 7). Imagining the storm to be a tornado or hurricane, this jacket had swirling asymmetric bands rather than neatly ordered ones, but you might not notice that at first glance. Ditto the double shirt collars (look 31) and button plackets. Similarly cables on sweaters misbehaved by extending into the ribbed hem. A number of fabrics seemed to directly reference the weather: A woven fabric looked like it has been splattered with rain drops; suiting had glints of lamé, and the closing short coats, made of laminated wool, mimicked the reflective and slick quality of water.Without the backstory, Nehera’s fall collection read as strong on menswear-style tailoring of the more traditional kind, with three-piece suits, and neckties. These anachronistic accessories are an object of fascination this season; maybe it has something to do with projecting power and/or bravado in the face of uncertainty. “Chaotic, but organized,” is how Zdút described the collection. The sartorial touches in it contributed the structure in that equation. Near the end of the lookbook you can see that there are some “mixed media” pieces, such as a car coat with a woven front and puffer back, which give a different impression coming than going, not unlike the before and after of a storm, actually.
29 February 2024
Designers are as curious and cautious about AI as the rest of us. The new technology has been used at basic levels to create prints and to write at least one press release (Stine Goya). Last season Collina Strada and Heliot Emil dove deeper, experimenting with the tech as a design partner. Now Nehera’s Ladislav Zdút and team are dipping their toes into the subject with an ingenious, pre-fall 2024 collection that considers the perfect imperfection of both machine and human error.“Beyond the mind-boggling power of algorithms, there are charming little glitches, sudden existential reflections, accidental poetry, and unintended humor,” reads the press release. As Zdút previewed some of them on a Zoom, he was careful to make a distinction between what he called a garment’s “envelope” and its functionality. While many pieces have “certain visual twists from the outside,” he explained, “inside, it’s a perfect fit.”Take the four-sleeve coats and dresses, for example. They are engineered so that you can wear either set of sleeves, letting the empty two fly free or tie them together into a belt. In addition to deconstructed collars, there is one that resembles a shirt cuff. What’s described as a patchwork jacket in tones of gray has an asymmetric inset; it’s what the team imagines AI’s misplacement of pattern pieces might look like. Iterating on this idea, the collection includes many fabric mixes, both in single designs, like an ivory cashmere robe coat with quilted sleeves (a minimalist’s dream), or multiple ones created via layering and styling.The collection is titled Before the Storm, and wavy two-color knits and speckle tweeds create a visual texture or unrest relating to that idea. Yet this is a glass-half-full collection, one that’s meant to be comforting physically (puffer anorak, anyone?) and psychologically. The theme could have easily led the clothes into surreal territory, but by some sleight of hand that’s been avoided. Meaning, for example, that sleeve scarves of wool twill don’t look disembodied; rather they seem to embrace the wearer and keep her warm—something no algorithm can achieve.
9 January 2024
Talking about Look 25, a black linen blend jumpsuit with a sleeveless jacket worn with a crisp poplin shirt, Ladislav Zdút spouted a quote from Pina Bausch: “Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost.” There’s a lot to unpack here. To begin with, it wasn’t difficult to make a connection between this ensemble, one of the most clean-lined in the collection, and the rigor of the dancer and choreographer’s work, which incorporated elements of ritual, as does Nehera’s spring look book. Photographed in a labyrinthine maze in a corn field near Bratislava with a trio of models, the aim, said Zdút, was to evoke the power of sisterhood; the team interpreted Bausch’s sentiment as an invitation to “put the hair down from time to time and dance.”There was a lot of airiness to be found in Nehera’s spring line-up, which featured many A-line silhouettes and fullness to balance the signature tailored elements. So slip shirts fell in a natural drape below the hem of a jacket, and palazzo pants had deep slits. Pulled from the archive, anNlogo from 1931 was used on pajama-like separates. Zdút described the palette as “dreamy, romantic, slightly blurred.” The idea was to capture that “stereoscopic effect” of turning to look at something after one’s eyes have been exposed to the sun. A double dying process was used on a pretty checked dress with a languid scarf detail in order to give materiality to that concept.Linen, noted Zdút is “traditional to Slovakia,” and many variants were used here; at times crushed, or in twill and jersey varieties. The collection also made use of tropical wool and more papery poplins. Those textures supported a mood of expansiveness that breezed through a collection designed to deliver what Zdút dubbed “comfidence”—a combination of “comfort with confidence.”
28 September 2023
Ladislav Zdút brought a sense of quietude to Nehera’s resort collection. The surprise is that the team did so by nodding to the 1980s. It’s a decade usually associated with decadence, but it also gave us Giorgio Armani’s soft tailoring, which offered an alternative to structured “linebacker” shoulders, and reminded us that strength can be expressedsotto voceas well as at full volume.Gentle dropped shoulders are a key element of this lineup, as seen on a smart double-breasted suit in a camel check with a beautiful raised seam detail framing the buttons. An inverted triangle shape is used for toppers, like a washed denim vest to wear with full-legged jeans of the same material. The neutral tones of the collection are enlivened by textured or washed cottons and Irish linen, which, said Zdút, has qualities similar to what used to be available in his native Slovakia. The crispness of the material is not at odds with the mildness of the collection; it’s the resolution of opposites that defines Nehera’s no-fuss approach to fashion.
15 June 2023
After a three-year absence, Nehera returned to Paris and the runway. Ladislav Zdút found things relatively the same. “I just remember at the beginning of the pandemic [the idea] that we should slow down, but everything is back with a higher pace,” he said on a call. Still, this Bratislava designer resists fashion’s treadmill by staying in his lane, keeping focused, and not following trends. Nehera is a good place to find minimal tailoring and well-designed, quietly chic separates. The wow factor in this collection was a pointed shoulder construction.Paring back is a brand m.o., and this season the team tasked themselves with not only conjuring a minimal aesthetic, but simplifying patterns and production as well. The dresses that looked like they had a floating panel in back were made with two rectangles of fabric sewn together with minimal intervention, for example. Other pieces featured deliberately raw edges or exposed seams that revealed their streamlined construction: they also reminded us of all the work that goes into the making of a single garment. This read as an honest gesture and complemented the functional air of tone-blocked workwear-influenced pieces. Pants that can be adjusted to be worn up to two sizes larger or smaller will give the customer a hand in creating the proportions they prefer.In keeping with the concept of eliminating excess, the palette was extremely muted and the styling, always a highlight of Nehera lookbooks, was pared back. The combined result made the collection look flat rather than vibrant. On the bright side, showing that the clothes can be worn by men and women alike provided a new perspective on the versatility of Nehera’s considered designs.
1 March 2023
“Simplicity rather than minimalism,” is what the team at Nehera were aiming for this season, said Ladislav Zdút on a call from Bratislava. They achieved that in spades—and also provided my fashion mantra for 2023.Simplicity is the one of the most difficult things to achieve in any field, including fashion. It requires clarity, restraint, innovation; essentially it’s about making more with less (which, overall, is the approach that must be adopted to save the planet). The focus at Nehera is always on interpretive tailoring which tends toward the informal; for pre-fall there are quilted coats made, unexpectedly, from haberdashery fabric. The skirt suit is making a return and here it comes with a midi. Alongside trench coats, including one in a coated red fabric, there’s a cutaway trench dress.For a while now Nehera has been playing with the idea of clothing-as-accessory. It’s there in the styling, and add-ons like a one-armed half poncho, and built into some of the garments, including pants and vests with pleated panels. Knits are a focus and the striped ones (like a bra that was styled over a shirt and under a jacket) were cousins of the “broken stripe” print on a shirt dress that Zdút described as having an “’80s volume.” That decade is getting a lot of play. I suppose you could say that Nehera’s insistence on equating feminism with feminity, and its focus on work-friendly design, are somewhat aligned with that decade, but this is not a retro collection. Rather it paves the way forward for a new look, one that’s easy but polished, and delivers simplicity with a bit of pizazz.
20 December 2022
With a winning spring collection Ladislav Zdút and his team are redefining power dressing for today. Their iteration—executed in Nehera’s signature neutrals and enlivened with strokes of persimmon, yellow, and royal blue—is softly structured and smart, with interesting textures and asymmetries. A blazer has one lapel and uneven seams; a two-piece jacket can be worn as half a garment or a whole. Nicely styled, the lookbook makes the argument for layering shirts and wearing skirts over pants.The collection takes its title, Powershift, from a 1990 book of the same name by sociologist and futurist Alvin Toffler. Throughout history, says Zdút, women have traditionally adapted elements of menswear, particularly exaggerated shoulders, when assuming positions of power; this season he wanted to “underline the new feminine confidence,” and demonstrate that power “need not necessarily be expressed by exaggerated shoulders.”One of the most pleasing aspects of this offering is how beautifully it reconciles its contradictions: It borrows functional elements from menswear and uniforms, and uses them to express femininity; catering to city dwellers, it takes inspiration from nature. (The lovely floral print is a collaboration with Juraj Straka, a textile designer from Bratislava who is based in Antwerp.) Effortless is an overused word in fashion, but that’s the vibe of this breezy collection.
3 October 2022
A sense of calm and rootedness emanates from Nehera’s resort imagery. Design-wise the collection brings together the masculine and the feminine, sturdiness and fragility. The idea, said creative director Ladislav Zdút, was to create “the impression of the creative, urban working woman seeking peace in nature.” Driving the point home, the lookbook was photographed in the Botanical Gardens in Bratislava, though not to flowery effect. Instead there’s a rustic feeling that’s derived from references to Slavic tradition that are updated for city folk. The straight pants, for example, mean business, while a pink linen suit takes tailoring in a soft and relaxed direction.Some of the simple, straight-lined cuts resonate with those on view in the “Kimono Style” exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Contrasting with that geometry is the poetry found in the round fullness of melon shaped sleeves. Romance comes into the picture in the form of asymmetric pleated top and skirt in white cotton shirting, and watercolor like prints of yellow and green on an ivory ground.
6 June 2022
The most defining characteristic of this collection is tailoring, which, says Nehera owner Ladislav Zdut, is the very “substance” of the brand. Here pants aren’t slipping off hip bones as is the fashion this season; they’re at the waist and pleated. More grown-up than tomboy, but more casual than traditional office attire, they respond to the present desire for clothes that can segue from home to office and back again. Comfortable but polished seems to be what women are demanding these days.At Nehera, clothes are designed to be in service of the wearer, allowing her to adapt them to match her moods. Some pieces can even be customized. A puffer jacket is made of two halves buttoned together; so is a trench that also has adjustable sleeves. There are also detachable pouch pockets, some bulky to strap on or off at will. In light of the ongoing conflict in Ukraine, neighbor to Slovakia (Nehera is headquarter in Bratislava), they conjure migration, which was not at all the intention. Hands-free was more the idea. Pockets, said Zdut on a call “are comfortable because you don’t need to have a handbag in your hands; you have empty hands for your work, or for hugging your children or somebody you love. So pockets aren’t just functional at Nehera; they are symbolic to us.”We live in a dissonant world, which Nehera wanted to address this season through a somewhat glitchy print that was meant to contrast the analog with the digital. This message doesn’t really come through, but there is plenty of succor to be found in the soft armor of Nehera’s suiting.
8 March 2022
There is no sense of pre-fall being an “in-between” season at Nehera. Ladislav Zdút and his team took a big step forward here with a collection in which the brand’s tailoring was combined with elements borrowed from military kit and workwear elements. The most striking example of this was a blazer with wonderfully shaped bomber jacket sleeves. There was also an army green satin bomber that was extended into a coat and other great outerwear options.The collection is meant to be functional, providing both weather protection and ease. “One quite often feels that if you’re wrapped in something like cashmere, it gives you a feeling of protection, it gives you a feeling of comfort,” noted Zdút. “We always have in our mind that we are part of the textile business, so the tactile sensation is very important to us.”Zdút and co. are working as responsibly as possible, with a concentration on natural fibers and recycled polyester sourced in the EU. The brand also worked with one of the last remaining mills in Slovakia this season to create original textiles. Masculine materials like checks and pinstripes were worked into feminine silhouettes, which were cut close to the body, an exciting development. Nehera’s past focus on oversize silhouettes, particularly when it came to dresses, sometimes took the brand in the direction of “artwear,” when actually it’s a great source for minimalist dressing. The prints in this collection we’re a small distraction from that core message, which otherwise was communicated loud and clear.
20 January 2022
This season, the Nehera team expanded its range and bent its perception, both subtly. Range-wise, this collection built on the key tailoring foundation of the house by adding ingenious and functional details, and used trompe l’oeil techniques to aid the subtraction of putatively key details such as sleeves and collars. Beyond tailoring, it took inspiration from the glassware artwork of Czechoslovak couple Libenský and Brychtová to generate gently eye-defying prints which were presented as finished wearable surfaces or still further abstracted by pleating.Suiting in wool or cotton linen pinstripe featured armless jackets shaped to be worn over near-matching sleeved vests. The back of a blue pinstripe top coat featured strapping and layered venting that allowed it to be worn conventionally or undone and in flowing disarray.Further double-take details included menswear collars reimagined as tie-liberated points of decoration, popped up, torn-shoulder poplin shirting, and floating patch pockets on a great purple-blue linen suit. Less complex but still convincing were the soft, washed, split-hem boot-cut denim pants teamed with matching half-sleeve vests.Prints included seagrass-inspired abstract patterns on that torn-shoulder shirting and a compelling glass-dappled iris print used in viscose suiting or on a two-piece, two-way pleated chiffon dress. Nehera might not be the loudest of labels, but what it communicates through its garments—a thoughtful, pragmatic but also intellectually playful aesthetic—is a message worth hearing.
17 September 2021
An oasis of calm. That was my immediate reaction upon seeing Nehera’s resort collection, which is executed in shades of white.Modestwas the second. For some, the roominess of these clothes will provide a refuge from the trend of dressing up and letting go for “hot girl” summer dressing.To be clear, company owner Ladislav Zdút and his team weren’t reacting to “sexy” dressing, they were just doing their thing. The Nehera woman is better described as cosmopolitan than as a coquette. For resort they found inspiration in Sara Berman (a Jewish émigré to New York, via Belarus and Palestine, and mother of the artist Maira Kalman), and her pale, exquisitely edited wardrobe, the subject of a 2017 exhibition at the Costume Institute. The folds you see in an ankle-grazing white shirtdress and some oversized tote bags are not, as they first seem, styling fails, but a nod to Berman’s neatly folded clothes.A less literal and more intriguing Berman-inspired idea the team explored was that of an interchangeable wardrobe. It’s a concept with roots in the ’70s, when separates dressing really took off, that has come up a few times of late and ties in with the idea of making what you have, or what you acquire, work harder for you.Nehera’s double-breasted coat, longer balmacaan, and pantsuits, all rendered in neutral linen, were among the collection’s keepers. The away-from-the-body silhouette worked best with tailoring and heavier fabrics. Some of the softer pieces fell flat. Novelty entered in the form of a puff-sleeve dress in a subtle stripe; the team experimented with a sustainable leather-like fabric, derived from cacti.The pandemic might have temporarily dried up retail in some areas, but Nehera opened a shop-cum-oasis during the crisis. It’s located in Vienna, long a cultural crossroads, not far from the company’s headquarters in Bratislava, Slovakia.
12 June 2021
This Nehera collection was inspired by three historical figures who envisioned and embodied a point of view beyond the mores of their respective times. The first was Elisabetta Gonzaga, the Mantuan noblewoman patroness of the Renaissance; the second was couturier and Klimt muse Emilie Louise Flöge; and the third was pre-Surrealist painter Giorgio de Chirico. As Ladislav Zdut said down a Zoom, each character provided signposts, “evidence of our breaking our own conventions and boundaries,” in a collection that did indeed push his brand’s envelope, albeit gently.Starting with the prints—for the second season produced in partnership with Juraj Straka—there was a fetching homage to the disembodied architecture of De Chirico on a down coat, padded clutch, and split-paneled skirt. The rippling and shimmering representations of Flöge were mirrored in double-layered gridded prints, opaque organza over non-opaque, that created the illusion of animation with movement on turtleneck dresses and skirts. As for Gonzaga, her presence was less visually literal—a portrait attributed to Raphael is one of the few records of her appearance—and more an embodiment of female self-authorship in a male-dominated milieu. This was further expressed through dinky twists to the strictures of tailoring, Nehera’s baseline specialism. Jackets were reframed through the removal of lapels and insertion of vertical side pockets, or the addition of an asymmetrically peaked lapel over a 1.5-breasted closure and folded satin back panel.Silhouettes were refashioned through the placing of wool or cashmere knitwear over tailoring, or skirts over pants. Crushed velvet in silver and gold was used to fashion soft suiting, dresses, and skirts, both gilded and powerful. A further shot of color in a typically neutral collection for the brand came via a burst of flamingo pink on a matte trench, smock dress, and babushka scarf.Focused and, within the context of Nehera’s positioning, experimental (as is the brand’s effort to source a non-synthetic vegetarian leather alternative for its accessories), this was a collection in which the impression of difference was accentuated by its place in the familiar.
3 March 2021
When Ladislav Zdut and his team started working on this collection back towards the tail end of 2020’s first wave, they were hopeful. Some of those hopes—as evidenced by a long-yoked blue poplin shirt named ‘Biden’—have come to pass. Others, not quite yet.The lockdowns of then, since, and now have at least, said Zdut, provided: “emptiness for meaningfulness to occur.” Nehera was hardly an excessively or aesthetically profligate brand in the first place, but post-pandemic Zdut has doubled down on the conviction that “luxury should be confined by functionality and comfort. Because excess is not normal any more. And extravagance with no purpose is not normal.”The clothes that resulted were not as puritan as that manifesto suggests. The prints, designed in partnership with the Juraj Straka, the Antwerp-based alum of Hermès, Schiaparelli, and Dries Van Noten, were not functionally purposefu—what decoration is?—yet enriched the visual texture on georgette shirting and satin suiting. Experiments in layering saw a pleat-hemmed shirt placed under a shorter sheer viscose turtleneck, and a tuftily fibrous bouclé polo shirt worn above one of those checked dresses: these delicate rewrites of the conventional shorter-below, longer-above hierarchy of worn facade were gently arresting. Double-jacketing, a reversible trench in competing panels of beige and sage, down coats with unzippable skirts, and narrow cigarette pants with pleated panelling that fell and fanned down from the left hip were further interrogations of the purely functional manifesto that inspired them. This collection of soft tailoring was abrim with adaptable and mix-and-matchable pieces you could see living a fruitful worn life across many seasons to come.
14 January 2021
Ladislav Zdut, co-owner of Nehera, concurred over email that the press release for this collection was a little on the skimpy side. He kindly agreed to join the dots in a further mail he wrote while flying back to Europe from South Korea, where, he added, sales of the brand are picking up nicely.Thirty thousand feet up over who knows where, Zdut elaborated: “We understand our mission as similar to the architect’s role. We create a space for a creative life. We provide freedom and inspiration. Let me quote Adolf Loos: ‘The work of art is a private matter for the artist. The house is not.’ Our ambition is to translate this into fashion.”The creative space these clothes were intended to help shape was framed in a context similar to that of Nehera’s most recent resort collection: the pandemic’s advent, an instinctive wish to return to nature, and a sense of “precautionary relief between the two waves.” As in resort, Zdut’s team again looked at pagan rituals and worked to produce a collection in elemental materials and neutral colorways—in truth an ongoing motif of the house—with a heavy emphasis on tailoring, which Zdut says is the touchstone of Nehera’s “ongoing creative expression.” The tailoring in looks one and 13 was cut in a summer-weight silk-linen mix, while 19’s shorts suit was delivered in unadulterated cotton poplin.What decorative gestures there were were gentle: a print of a Viktor Szemzö floral photo in look 20’s loose cotton-silk dress, and more florals based on the first images ever achieved by photocopying, by Xerox, as exemplified by look 21’s tie-strapped dress. If this was a collection whose design was an exercise in working hard to appear not overworked, it worked. “Space means luxury,” wrote Zdut from above, and here he presented a luxury space it would be a pleasure to inhabit.
5 October 2020
If regrets are lessons we haven’t learned yet, then fashion’s current crash course in improved practice should lead to a less remorseful future. The Slovak brand Nehera is just one pupil in this process, and as owner Ladislav Zdút put it the main takeaway at his company has been, “Less is beautiful.” He said that the company has long contemplated refining and reducing its output, but added that “sometimes we just haven’t been brave enough to try.” This season, both in the variety of fabrications and number of styles produced, necessity forced Nehera to fewer SKUs. The result? Increased sales.This new focus on value rather than numbers was nicely displayed in the purposefully crinkled pieces that were meant to reflect the chosen mode of storage for precious garments—folded and pressed into trunks—when Nehera’s forebear factory was founded in the 19th century. Zdút said there was a loose consideration of pagan rituals in the collection, but rather than some murderouslyMidsommarvibe this translated into a loosely languid and tangibly organic feeling that ran from washed denim tailoring through to raw-edged linen outerwear and dresses. A floral on chiffon print and strokes of shocking pink and sky blue provided variation in what was otherwise a carefully mustered muesli of naturally-hued neutrals and matte monochrome. Pared back and thought through, this collection seemed a beautifully less selection of partner pieces just perfect for the pleasurable ritual of wearing.
31 August 2020
Ten minutes after this Nehera show was due to start, perhaps 80% of the audience stood sardine-style in the dank and gloomy entryway of the Bastille Design Center. When you’re a bit zonked with an IQOS cough and fresh off a plane from Milan, such a milieu is a perfect petri dish for paranoid fantasies that you are fashion’s equivalent of Gwyneth Paltrow inContagion. Every few minutes, however, a few more supplicants would be granted access into the attractive wooden-cobbled show space, and it slowly filled up. This tortuously counterproductive exercise in crowd control was a buzzkill.The Nehera collection that followed was not worth the eventual 35-minute wait, but it was fine-to-good. Autumnal and as stolid as the heavy vulcanized boots that made the models descend the stairs with great caution, it featured handsomely oat-y wool coats with pronounced collars, some pleasing patched shearlings, and skirts and jackets in softly colored, vertically arranged velvet strips. There was a considered conversation between shirting: striped-yellow silk, a flecked fine-gauge gray suiting fabric, and white cotton poplin. This was not a show you’d want to spend your last day on earth attending, but the door policy apart, it was fine enough.
26 February 2020
The plot at Nehera, as owner Ladislav Zdut puts it, centers on a cottage in the countryside of Slovakia on an early winter morning, where a young Patti Smith is just waking up.Having packed nothing, her sartorial save is grandpa’s sweaters, or she might cut up one of his shirts, or simply pick up a piece of fabric and feminize oversized trousers with a makeshift belt. The throughline is menswear suiting—in herringbone wool, for example—with unexpected details, like slit sleeves, and other touches that are meant to invite (as opposed to demand) a second look.The Nehera woman prefers it that way, and the brand’s base will probably latch right onto a parka, in brown or orange with herringbone quilting, as well as hourglass-cut jackets and overcoats. A military-inspired trench and a muted teal overcoat looked like they could march through the years, but grandpa’s pajama stripes skewed a tad drab on dresses and blouses.Nehera has a strong following in Asia—its leading markets are Korea, China, and Japan—with the U.S. and Europe coming in close behind. To that end, the brand is expanding its lifestyle footprint. Come spring, it will open a first boutique in the prime Stephansplatz neighborhood of Vienna, complete with natural oil-based candles for the home. Those will probably catch on, too.
28 January 2020
There was a lot of midshow standing up to fire off phone photos among the audience at Nehera, a response that seemed disproportionate to the studied neutrality of the clothes. Sure, there were jolts of quirk and color here and there, and a sometimes effective play of the synthetic and sportswear touched against the organic and monastic, but this was not pulse-racing stuff. It wasn’t supposed to be either.Instead, this was a collection in which you considered subtleties: the full billowing back of a white poplin shirt and a black shirtdress; the slick sheen of cycling shorts against the slubby roughness of the linen cowl coat worn over it; and the gathering at each hip on what looked like a lab coat in pale blue. Quite clever and fresh-looking was a sort of front-facing martingale on some semitailored women’s jackets. Some quirk didn’t work, such as a too-try-hard single-suspender skirt and a heavily belted black men’s tailoring look that seemed a clumsy redux of GmBH’s gorgeous June statement. The harnessed-on hard-case handbag was a good idea in theory; however, in execution, that strapping messed with the lines of the garments beneath and looked less effortless than unthought through when looped under the wearer’s posterior. Open-back trenches and jackets with an opening at the armpit to allow the sleeves to go unused were standard with-a-twist womenswear: meh.The abstract shapes on knits and prints by Laco Teren were attractive enough, and some looks generated an arresting color clash—especially red versus orange—which was all the more impactful amid the black and neutrals that dominated this perfectly fine collection.
25 September 2019
Monastic-quirky with a neutral twist, this Nehera collection sometimes resembled uniforms. The priestly collared dresses with three buttons at the left shoulder that came in white cotton, blue cotton, and mustard satin looked like the staff attire of some Goop-y, clean-eating spa. If the padded, notched-collared, patch-pocketed blue overcoat with a matching blue shirt had come with one of the little bycokets that peppered the rest of this collection, it would have been 100 percent airline uniform—even without the hat, it was pretty cross-check, doors to manual. The woven rectangular checkerboard and striped pieces were based on the work of Anni Albers, whose name was misspelled in the press release (bad), and whose patterns pleasingly complemented a cast of diversely aged models (good). Some of the quirk felt forced and futile: A wraparound trench that sat twisted high on the right shoulder and low on the left looked like its wearer had rushed out of the house without noticing her button-to-buttonhole arrangement was entirely wrong. While it was interesting to learn that the hand-sketched prints were by award-winning graphic designer Ondrej Rudavsky, without that context, they looked like garments scrawled with doodles that signified little in themselves.The most winning pieces here were the most subtle: a white rib-knit sweater and dress with a pretty, overlapping effect on the chest, and a version in beige whose softness pleasingly wrestled with the hardness of the pocketed and back-buttoned cotton drill skirt below. A pair of black leather pants worn under a nipped-waist tailored jacket was gorgeously cut. An otherwise irreproachable oversize suit in soft gray cotton was scuppered by a pointless strap hanging from the jacket. It was just one scissor snip away from being highly snap-up-able.
27 February 2019
Nehera, the Bratislava, Slovakia–based Czech fashion label, has an interesting story, one that many companies, in desperate need of a sellable heritage narrative, would kill for. It was founded in the 1920s by a visionary Czech entrepreneur, Jan Nehera, a pioneer in vertically integrating retail operations and advanced manufacturing production with smart marketing promotion; it was a groundbreaking process, one that predates the business model employed by today’s luxury conglomerates. Nehera took advantage of the textile tradition rooted in his hometown of Prostejov, where in 1858 the first-ever European ready-to-wear factory was opened. He produced good-quality, tailored daywear, and his forward-thinking approach proved so successful that in less than a decade he was able to open a network of 130 retail shops across northern Europe and Africa. World War II put a brusque end to Nehera’s activities; production was stopped at the company’s facilities.After many twists and turns, the label was relaunched in 2014; its aesthetic bears a well-considered, pared-down elegance reminiscent of a certain modernist architecture. It’s not a coincidence that the great architect and theorist Adolf Loos, whose essay “Ornament and Crime” advocated the superiority of smooth, clean surfaces against fin de siècle maximalism, was born in Brno, now belonging to the Czech Republic.Nehera’s repertoire is grounded in elevated workwear and comfortable utility dressing; designed by an international team based in Bratislava, it exudes a serene yet dynamic feel that comes across as rather cool. Pre-Fall was informed by the working lives of women artists, like Canadian-born American abstract painter Agnes Martin. Her daily routine in the atelier, where comfort as well as a certain dressed-down sophistication was needed, provided the inspiration for a wardrobe of functional, versatile pieces, rich in smartly designed details. Square-cut padded cotton cabans came with slitted armholes to remove the sleeves when required; long, masculine, apron-like shirts had attached elasticated garters to roll up the sleeves and free the hands. The same attitude of enabling unencumbered gestures was infused in a roomy Bauhaus-inspired maxi caftan, while a chunky knit cardigan incorporated long tabard-like panels to be wrapped around for extra warmth.
Juxtapositions, layering, and loose-fit proportions infused with a sense of ease were the collection’s leitmotifs; the color palette was kept restrained yet warm and comforting: rich browns, honey, and an elegant hue of Prussian blue. It made for a remarkably fresh, honest take on utilitarian style—elegantly unassuming, optimistic, practical, and artsy in equal measure.
28 January 2019
Downstairs at this excellently catered presentation, a group of models of different ages stood in a circle, held hands, and swayed. This was a reference to protest and resistance that was both as loose and lucid as many of the garments in this very strong collection of gently austere womenswear. There were a great number of military references; a trenchcoat in olive cotton was an almost exact adaptation of the rain trench issued to conscripts in the Soviet-era Czechoslovak People’s Army—Nehera’s co-owner Ladislav Zdút was among their number—and a more closely fitted version in a softer jersey-feel fabrication was printed in a version of that military’s adaptation of the East German Strichtarn raindrop-pattern camouflage. The orange abstract animalia-looking print on chiffon skirts and dresses was based on another camouflage, Zdút said, that lined the military-issue garments.More military references included linen M-65 jackets in black and pants cuffed loose in cotton with lower-than-functional knee patches. A fantastic caramel coated dress—designed, as managing director Bibiana Zdútová explained, to be considered an “overdress”—was cut out of parachute panels in a synthetic blend that felt, as many of the fabrics here, good to the hand. Another huge swath of a garment was the square but soft-shouldered dress in red jersey rayon, white cotton, and that orange camo, which came slashed under each arm. There was a lot of seersucker-y, striped, puckered silk linen, strong especially in a skirt layered with an opaque synthetic apron. A pleated calf-length skirt in black leather that was reversible (to be worn brown-side-up) was presented alongside a same-fabrication oversize poncho.Neutral, natural colorways only sometimes galvanized by punchier shades added to the passive resistance vibes emanated by those swaying models downstairs in a collection that repurposed the apparel of combat to signal a far more serene state of being.
26 September 2018
Nehera has recently reshuffled the design deck, sourcing talents from some of the biggest names in the business and installing them right at the top. Smart move. Timely, too. For Spring, the Nehera lineup shows a kind of unity that was missing in its most recent outings. Now, the collection has a more universal appeal.Take, for example, the new cropped tapered trousers and jackets in paper-thin blue or brown Spanish leather—as it turns out, this is the contribution of a studio recruit sourced chez Céline. Such neo-classic separates hew closer to the brand’s roots, according to owners Ladislav and Bibiana Zdut. That the Slovakian brand has resolved to avoid skewing folkloric, save an apron design or two, is much to their credit.Instead, Spring looks like a sort of French take on what Nehera once was, a mash-up of mountaineering moments (evident in vintage patches on heavy sweaters and soft leather slippers extrapolated from walking shoes), fluid fabrics that favor natural movement, sturdy cottons with shelter elements, or experimental light cottons worked into kimono-leaning shapes. For those unsure of working a loosely tailored single-breasted suit in sunflower yellow, a royal blue option could well prove a workhorse.Loose trenches, tunic tops, and a black ribbed cotton dress are about as travel-friendly as it gets. Says Ladislav, “We hope to show that our way is worth joining.” Adds Bibiana, “It’s all about the trip.” In any case, Nehera’s new direction looks like an interesting follow.
25 June 2018
The protection message has been so ubiquitous for Fall, we might as well declare it the new black (sorry, couldn’t resist). To a large degree, Nehera can claim this authentically; wrapping and layering have been hallmarks of the Slovakian brand since it relaunched in 2014, and shapes often envelop and skim rather than cling. As explained by creative director Bibiana Zdútová, the idea didn’t hinge on global affairs so much as the recreational setup of emerging from a hot steam properly bundled to confront the elements. Hence the tiling print as a nod to Ottoman bathhouses. More interpretive were the open-seamed rip-stop pants worn over cashmere leggings, or quilted dungarees and shawl tops that cosseted the body beyond what would ordinarily be expected of them.Meanwhile, the wintry lookbook images, once again thoughtfully rendered by Michal Pudelka, were shot just outside Bratislava; there, textured down jackets, layered utility coats, and shearling bonnets would certainly serve a purpose. “Each piece has to have a reason to exist,” said owner Ladislav Zdút. On a day when temperatures in Paris dipped below freezing, it wasn’t a stretch to imagine an editor making the rounds in the chic shearling wrap skirt, especially given its surprising slimness. The reversible shearling coat, gray like an overcast sky, also looked rather smart—until the model turned around and her back revealed an impractical open vent. An easy adjustment for retail will rectify this, yet it was the perfect example of how some of the clothes, and also the footwear, ended up overworked. The Nehera aesthetic is most persuasive when it bridges monastic and modern without trying too hard. Any of the tailored coats in double-faced wool or else the relaxed bouclé pants marked a comfort zone for both brand and wearer alike.
27 February 2018
Nehera is in a transitional phase. The label parted ways with its Paris-based creative director last season, and owner Ladislav Zdút and his wife, creative director Bibiana Zdútová, have set about re-situating the personality of a nearly century-old brand.Originally founded in the 1930s, Nehera went from a small Czechoslovakian tailoring enterprise to a well-known player in Western Europe. In its contemporary iteration, the company is focusing on organic, natural shapes and fabrics; architectural lines; and local sourcing.The Pre-Fall collection focused on the “presence of nature,” with varying results. The earthy color palette—deep green, beige, rust, sky blue—was right on cue, as were easy cropped trousers, “smart” track pants in jersey and wool, and roomy menswear-inspired shirts in washed poplin.“We try to make it easy to wear, but with classic, tailored details,” explained Zdútová. On one side, it’s minimal; on the other, it’s “relaxed fancy.” A double-face, reversible coat can be adjusted to be worn long or short. While versatility is always a plus, the coat felt ever so slightly fussy in the shorter version.Shirtdresses were more dress than shirt, most beguilingly in a variation that brought together soft gathers and a structured line. Prints inspired by the connection between nature and urban living reprised the rings of a cut tree trunk, painted over in hues of blue and brown and rendered as a pretty camouflage-Cubist mash-up. A burgeoning accessories line included the label’s top-selling triangle shoulder bag, plus another that can be worn three ways: as a cross-body, belt bag, or clutch.
29 January 2018
Who is Nehera? A group of women emerged after the final runway roundabout wearing white T-shirts that readWe Areon the front andNeheraon the back. Together, they represented the Bratislava-based brand’s design team and, aside from the strong female message, there was the secondary message of the collective “we” in the wake of artistic director Samuel Drira’s departure back in June.Without him, the brand risked losing focus and possibly a forward thrust. But this collection proved that the gals are doing just fine, upholding self-assured femininity expressed through airy, natural fabrics and thoughtful layers. Their creations were presented slowly, with models circling a pitch of stylized soil at close range, which allowed us a few extra seconds to observe the relaxed tailoring marked with laces or knots—and to also to process the myriad straps and elaborate draping. A pocketed gilet and cropped blouson signaled that the team was treating this collection in a functional, relevant way despite an obvious Central European–countryside-shepherd reference (if any label showing in Paris can claim this authentically, it’s Nehera). But chalk it up to a sign of the times—and an inkling for edge—new military-inspired, wearable bags have replaced the artisanal accessories of previous collections.The casting was reasonably diverse, underscoring that white linen shirtdresses and deconstructed jackets do not speak to a demographic so much as a mindset. Yet it’s reasonable to believe these women might also want to express their sensuality, and this didn’t come across the same way as it did when Drira was at the helm. All well-proportioned, the looks were not a disservice to the body, they just so rarely suggested it. A trench worn déshabillé and a black elongated coat with upper-arm cut-outs seemed like small concessions.Not visible in these photos are the two women who played fujara flutes from high on scaffolds. Their atonal music spoke perfectly for the meditative clothes, because for any extra effort required to figure out how to best button up or wrap, one imagines that being dressed this way has a calming effect on the soul.
27 September 2017
Slovakian brand Nehera and its Paris-based creative director, Samuel Drira, discreetly parted ways earlier this season, so the Resort collection was accompanied from Bratislava by owner Ladislav Zdút and director Bibiana Zdútová. Of Drira’s tenure, the latter explained, “I’m really proud of what we created together. We reached a point after three years where we had to think about the future and we realized we saw the future differently. But we really want to keep and protect what we built because the brand is still the same.” And to a large extent, it was—at least judging by the trenchcoats, blousons, and billowy tops that made up this studio offering. Many of the ideas explored over previous seasons—adjustable details transforming silhouettes from body-grazing to boxy; peel-away zippers and buttons exposing hints of skin; a vast spectrum of beige; handcrafted accessories in wood and metal—maintained consistency. Inner shoulder straps within a camel trench furthered the Nehera styling of semi-undress; while new natural rubber sneakers, inspired by Czechoslovak Olympic runner Emil Zátopek, introduced an element of casual sport that felt fresh and grounded all those organic shapes.Apparently, Drira selected some of the fabrics before his departure, which might explain the unique ivory bouclé covered with the finest layer of silk mousseline, or the perfect sturdy linen. Women who discovered the label thanks to his prepossessing minimalist approach will continue to appreciate the swooping drape of a sleeve or the sloped back of a white poplin shirt. Whether or not they knew his name, they were responding to these nuanced signatures. Truth be told, they may also have been aware of his occasional tendency to overthink a garment, and there was less of that here. Time will tell whether a deliberate shift toward more vibrancy (see the watercolor striped dress) and youthfulness via teamwork will be enough to replace a singular, sensitive vision.
12 June 2017
The wood bricks that paved the floor ofNehera’s show venue, a 19th-century industrial building, felt like a fitting metaphor for Samuel Drira’s latest collection; something ordinary can suddenly become original based on our baseline perception. Consider the backs of tops that angled upward as though they’d been stretched out on a frame; the designer explained that despite the seemingly complex shape, he simply reworked an otherwise square pattern to create unexpected, “envelope” volume. While he made the execution sound easier than it probably was, his evolved designs invariably emerge from recognizable elements—whether a gray pinstripe on soft camel suiting, pastel pink and blue down outerwear with ripple-effect quilting, or an extra-large apron over-layer. With the ’30s-era floral dresses as a vintage counterpoint to the crinkled lamé layers and a crackled aluminum-esque jacket, Drira seemed to be working through a trousseau of past and future, with timeless men’s tailoring as his midpoint.This much is certain: He is not intimidated by asymmetries and by showing them to varying degrees of drama, he encourages us to think of them as natural points of differentiation, not abnormalities. As he put it, “It’s always about moving a classic into an abstract without losing the wearability.” The wearability aspect, however, is relative to the wearer’s mind-set, and Nehera as a brand is somewhat self-selecting; those who identify with it already lean toward contemplative style. But to Drira’s credit, this was as all-inclusive a range of separates as he’s conceived so far, hopefully enticing women who can’t imagine themselves doing the full boxy blazer–to–flat boot statement. Few would dispute the fantastic reconstructed ease of the slouchy sheepskin jacket, for instance. Yet this collection’s wood brick was the mature model in the bonded rubber and wool trench; she commanded all others with her stealthy twist on such a traditional look.
1 March 2017
The appointment to view Samuel Drira’s new collection for Nehera took place at precisely the same time that people began gathering for the Women’s March in Paris. This reviewer was feeling a major case of female duty FOMO. But given the need to soldier on, spending time with Drira felt as acknowledging of women as the situation allowed. With no exaggeration, the designer’s sensitivity toward how clothes engage with and position the woman wearing them is among the most admirable in the biz. This doesn’t always translate in photos, partly because the nuanced tailoring—a barely detectable military influence for Pre-Fall—gets flattened in pictures. Also, his rear views are usually as elemental as fronts and, needless to say, those aren’t visible here. The striking white column dress, for example, features a row of metal press buttons behind each shoulder. Unsnap either or both to expose the cross-back straps that extend like bridge cables across the back. Incidentally, Tilda Swinton was indirectly involved in this and the other dressier creations; she had worn Nehera earlier in the year, prompting Drira to consider how he would wardrobe her for evening.While his total looks might seem limited to those, like Swinton, who lean toward a certain contemplative design, anyone would appreciate the usefulness of a bib-like knit “warmer,” especially since it doubles as a scarf. “Sometimes I have a tendency to give looks more than one option, but this collection was about gesture,” he explained, referring to the roundness of his well-constructed trench, or the movement inherent in a raw cotton suit composed of a side-clasp top and relaxed volume pant. And if the funnel neck of an inky blue lambskin blouson and the outward lean of his boots would be noticed from afar, the intimacy of an up-close detail seems to give him equal pleasure. Notice how the wrists—to some, the most sensuous and underrated part of a woman’s body—appear framed by the sleeves of the khaki green sweater.
22 January 2017
Nehera’sSamuel Drira is not a minimalist. The deconstructed apron-style jackets, ample patchwork skirts, and white shirt-sleeve pants that were among his opening looks confirmed as much. Usually, achieving such complicated designs while also conveying a strong impression of ease comes from a maximum amount of trial and error.Drira’s show notes described the collection as “an idea of harmonious imbalance” and “getting dressed as [an] intuitive collage of emotional bits”—intriguing notions that seemed both accurate and oblique, especially when perhaps expressed as a smoking reworked into three parts and spliced with sport accents, so that the outcome seemed effortlessly askew. Backstage, he boiled down these cerebral concepts into a trifecta of techniques: “Twisting, cutting, and knotting.” He also noted that for all the unpredictable volumes, offset hemlines, strategic slits, and morphing functionality (a scarf trailing off into sleeves), the collection consisted of basics: trench coats, suits, knitwear, T-shirts. But layered and paired together, the looks were anything but basic. Even when the handkerchief folds and duster coats were stripped away—revealing waterproof vinyl evening pants or a cropped top and tube skirt in scrunched cotton embedded with metal—the statement was pure without being simple. And this will speak to women who seek clothes that aren’t bound to any particular time or place.As it turns out, Drira embedded elements executed by artisans located near the brand’s base of Bratislava; the indigo dyeing and the xylophone-style necklaces in ebony and cherry wood that were made by an instrument maker both qualify as local. That Drira tied all these personalized elements together—or loosely clasped them, if we’re being literal—shows the steadiness of his vaguely Arte Povera, East-West vision this season.
27 September 2016
Even thoughNehera’screative director, Samuel Drira, steers clear of the abstract, he imbues garments with plenty of nuance, so that they prove more persuasive on the figure, interacting with each other, than they do when unrelated on hangers. For the Resort collection, Drira addressed a range of wardrobe essentials with thoughtful design modifications: a starched white shirt elaborated with a funnel neck and jersey sleeves, relaxed Japanese denim with Judo belt seaming, and a lacquered leather blouson that felt lightweight despite being reversible. The designer kept his volumes vertical to articulate a Japanese influence; yet by layering crepe de Chine bias-cut dresses atop skirts, adding a cropped overleaf to a white T-shirt, and blousing a djellaba-inspired tunic, he showed that a longitudinal thrust needn’t just hang.It’s easy to conclude from Nehera’s typically subdued color scheme that the brand leans too safe, which might be why Drira introduced saturated shades of purple and rust that he said evoked the photography of Serge Lutens. But because Drira didn’t commit to them entirely, they came across as outliers. Conversely, photos don’t do justice to the bicolor plissé knits which had the effect of a fluted column, or the delicately fringed dresses and ponchos that draped more substantially than silk. Along with the toe-ring sandals and rational bracelet and buckle forms, these collection highlights spoke to Drira’s interest in neoclassical design. The two-ply T-shirt dress over jogging pants with detachable zip cuffs felt equally new and classic.
25 June 2016
Nehera dates back some 80 years to when Czechoslovakian businessman Jan Nehera developed a vertically integrated clothing brand sold by more than 130 retailers across three continents. The business model lives on more so than its visual codes, which means that most of us carry no real aesthetic frame of reference for the label and that Samuel Drira, Nehera’s creative director since 2014, has had a decent amount of latitude to establish a contemporary identity.With this collection, he continued to express much of the same calm grandeur that he explored in his former life as a creative consultant for clients includingThe Row,Christophe Lemaire,Hermès, andDamir Doma. The elusive equilibrium of fluidity and shape, however, came across as very much his own. Post-show, Drira revealed—a bit sheepishly, as if he thought it might sound hackneyed—how he had conjured up the idea of a woman surrounded by fog. But he also specified “from the back,” which helped explain the presence of the zippered vents, left open to confirm volume, and a statement cape anchored at the back with two utility pockets. The strength of this lineup owed largely to its varying architectural amplitudes: Prince of Wales suiting and velvet in tones of wet sand and limestone draped without droop. Blousons, tunics, and skirts all cocooned in relation to one another, sometimes layered in a single look. Whether worn by the youthful models or the veterans, the suede wedge boots seemed like a good fit.At the risk of sounding New Age–y, the overall vibe felt holistic—even more so given how we were situated in one of the halls of Paris’s national library; here, the collection’s palette echoed the sculpted reliefs overhead while the supple grainy leather pants evoked old book jackets. In fact, from the way he stretched a coat collar to the offset panels of a sleeveless top, Drira appeared to be rewriting the classics.
1 March 2016