Nells Nelson (Q3489)
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Nells Nelson is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Nells Nelson |
Nells Nelson is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Sisi Li is loosening up. The Nells Nelson designer is a tailoring specialist, but this season she was after an attitude that can only be described as breezy. It could be because she makes the collection in Italy and when she was working on it over the last few months the temperatures topped 100 degrees there. Let’s just say that on a September morning with uncomfortably high humidity, her brushed cotton and linen suits, slightly baggier than the silhouettes she usually prefers, looked mighty appealing.Stretching her vocabulary, Li experimented with looser, easier shapes here. Long pleated skirts in various fabric combinations signaled her shift in mood. An organza and silk version worn with a draped lapel cotton shirt is an outfit that could chicly stand up to the late summer heatwave New York is currently experiencing. A more casual but similarly effortless look combined light blue cotton pants with utilitarian darts at the knees and a shirt with Cuban guayabera roots. It too looked high dewpoint-proof. Other pieces made from a silk cotton tight-weave jacquard are water resistant—you never know what the weather will throw at you these days. Elsewhere, a shirt jacket made from red cashmere was a standout for more reason than one. Bright color is a new experiment for Li who otherwise uses neutrals like stone and “lilac mist,” and that downy cashmere definitely makes a person long for fall.
7 September 2023
More women should know Sisi Li’s name—women who, for instance, shop The Row or are counting the days until Phoebe Philo launches her new collection. Li’s Nells Nelson clothes are up there in that elevated echelon. Since launching five years ago, she’s specialized in knit suits that are as easy-wearing as woven suits can be constricting, but without sacrificing any of their polish. Li’s a fabric obsessive, so even her shirting is often cut from cashmere; this season there’s a snap pocket button-down in a thick gauge that has to be felt to be believed.The appeal of this collection goes beyond lofty fabrications, though. Li has been working hard expanding her vocabulary beyond two- and three-piece suits, and for fall she likes the look of a long, narrow skirt, minimal save for a drape at the back that lends the silhouette a sense of romance. A pair of shirt dresses follow the same lean lines—note the horizontal seam at the waist a couple of inches above the belt. Li put the seam there, she said, because she didn’t want the dress to look “too perfect.” Draped across the hips, the asymmetrical hem of a fine gauge sweater achieves the same lived-in effect. Another piece worth mentioning is the trench cape hybrid, especially the version lined in quilted down. It could elevate just about anything, including Li’s must-try knit joggers.
9 February 2023
Joy is the emotion Sisi Li is after for spring 2023. “Now that we’re going out again, women want to get dressed,” she said. The Nells Nelson designer makes suits and she specializes in subtlety: a seam shifted a few centimeters, a shoulderline extended just so. So the question for her was how to infuse tailoring with the uplift and exuberance she wanted to channel. The most obvious difference from this season to last is a push into color; she worked with pale lilac, moss green, and twilight blue, in addition to ivory and black. But look closely and other changes start to reveal themselves.Take the off-the-shoulder construction of a jacket, which exposes the barest hint of clavicle, or the corset gilet that reveals a great deal more (though she also showed it over a buttoned-to-the-collar shirt). With celebrities like Jessica Chastain, Kristen Stewart, and Sandra Bullock wearing her tailoring, she’s leaning into softness and sexiness, where once she thought along stricter parameters. The third piece of a three-piece suit is a tuxedo gilet with round lapels that frame the décolletage. However, the most striking development here is a bias-cut silk charmeuse slip dress with a bare back that plunges to the waist. Li draped it on the mannequin, and pointed out the clever double construction of the bodice that ensures it doesn’t bare too much. It’s a special piece and it’s obvious she found a lot of pleasure in making it.
9 September 2022
Tailoring, for centuries, has been made from wovens; it’s only recently that advancements in technology have made a knit pantsuit possible. When Nells Nelson’s Sisi Li stumbled on the opportunity to make one about three years ago, the tailoring specialist knew she was onto something. Slowly but surely, they’ve become a larger part of her repertoire; women respond to their polish and ease, a combination not always achieved in a woven suit. A Savile Row tailor will tell you that a well-cut jacket should feel like a bathrobe, but that’s rarely achieved when it’s not made-to-measure.Now, Hollywood is catching on. Sandra Bullock wore a pale blue three-piece Nells Nelson knit suit in December when she was making the talk show rounds for her Netflix filmThe Unforgiven, and Kristen Stewart’s stylist recently posted a shot of the Oscar nominee in a pinstriped knit two-piecer from the brand to Instagram. Celeb clients like these will help Li continue to build her small business, but the point is what Li’s little brand can do for her customers. After two years of working from home, comfort is more important to women than ever.The novelty here for spring: an expanded range of colors. A three-piece suit with wide-leg trousers in a barely there shade Li is calling lavender mist has Cate Blanchett’s name all over it, and the wine colorway would suit Jessica Chastain. Also tempting: a cardigan jacket and waistcoat set in matching luxe cashmere fishermen cables.
10 February 2022
Having made tailoring the focus of her brand Nells Nelson, Sisi Li typically uses shades of black, navy, and gray, with the occasional foray into army green. But the long months of lockdown, which she spent at home with her husband and son in Manhattan, changed her POV. “I didn’t want black anymore,” she said at a pre-New York Fashion Week appointment. “That’s one good thing from the pandemic, now I see colors.” The colors Li sees for spring include icy blue and pale blush pink, barely-there shades that look like they were lifted from an Impressionist painting by way of Giorgio Armani. As it happens, her gamine-ish aesthetic isn’t far off from Armani’s; see especially the three-piece suit in a knit silk/wool blend in that icy blue.The pandemic is shifting Li’s thinking about fit, as well, but this isn’t another story about expanding into loungewear or athleisure. Li added strapping details to the waist of shirts that can be worn undone for a loose silhouette, or buttoned for a gathered shape (note the delicate horn button). Either way, the shirts have a winsome femininity that feels new for this label, where sartorialism has always ruled the day. A maxi-length wrap skirt with a similar strapping detail was another appealing development. The exacting Li is never going to be a go-to resource for frills or lace and the like, but with her soft new colors and graceful, fluid shapes she’s talking to more women than she has in the past.
9 September 2021
Sisi Li reports that she sold more jackets and coats last year than she ever has before. If that surprises you, then you haven’t worn one of her jackets or coats. Much of Li’s tailoring is made with knits, not wovens, which means her blazers wear like sweaters and her trousers like track pants. This season, she cut a three-piece suit in a charcoal gray houndstooth jacquard knit; when you’re back in the office this fall, no one will know you’re still wearing a work-from-home fabric.In this year of lockdowns, comfort has become job number one. For many of fashion’s top designers, it’s a new concept, but there’s been no learning curve for Li. She chooses her materials with the utmost care; this time around, you can take your pick between a woven cashmere button-down and a knit one. She’s long thought about ways to add ease to structured silhouettes—and structure to easy ones. For fall, she’s designed a fine gauge V-neck sweater with French cuffs and horn buttons. That’s a subtle detail, but a novel one.
15 February 2021
The surprise in this Nells Nelson look book is the men’s clothes. The same knit suits Sisi Li makes for women, she’s also making for guys. “I have a lot of customers that say, ‘Oh, my husband wants this,’ and we special order it for them,” she says. “Men really like our knit jacket. It’s soft like a cardigan, but it still gives them the shoulders, the structure of the tailored jacket they’re used to.” Now more than ever the ease of Li’s knit suiting has appeal. We’ve spent six months more or less in lounge clothes. Who wants to go back to traditional tailoring while they’re sitting at their dining room table Zooming all day?Li is a sensitive designer; she’s attuned to little annoyances, like the way clothes hike up when you raise your arms, and she’s eager to fix them. The way some designers obsess about a credit in a magazine or an actress on the red carpet, Li cares about wearability and comfort. She could talk about gussets all day. That’s not sexy stuff, necessarily, but the details she insists on make a difference in her final products. Li and her family spent their quarantine in Woodstock. It’s not a buttoned-up kind of place. Other designers might’ve shrugged off tailoring entirely. Li made the accommodation of relaxing her silhouettes—but not by much. “If the pandemic taught me one thing,” she says, “it’s that you have to be who you are.”
18 September 2020
Designer Sisi Li is expanding her Nells Nelson collection. She’s launched a knitwear offering in fine cashmere-silk and wool-silk blends to layer under the suits that are her speciality, and, even more unexpected, she’s created her first pair of jeans. The slouchy style was made in collaboration with “the godfather of denim” Adriano Goldschmied, who is a family friend. They’re constructed from sustainable hemp and the indigo has been washed to what Li calls a “colorless” shade of icy gray.All the newness doesn’t mean that she’s lost interest in the tailoring that is her brand’s foundation. Li is as passionate as ever, and it shows in her laser focus on cut and material. Both her patterns and her textiles are understated, but the fabrics particularly are subtle in exceptional ways. For a few seasons now Li has been refining her knit suits, and for fall she’s produced both a Prince of Wales jacquard and a herringbone jacquard. The two knits have surprisingly different hand feels; the Prince of Wales is dense and substantial where the herringbone is fluid. Both are uncommonly easy to wear; the jacquard construction means they feel like a tracksuit.This season finds Li leaning into a boyish shape. A pinstripe wool three-piece—trench, button-down, and trousers—looked of the moment: streamlined and unfussy, and very smart with a pair of roughed-up flat boots. Genderless fashion is in fashion, but Li finesses the fine details. A midi-length coat dress is constructed with curving seams in the back to accentuate the waist, and the double vents on the rear of a jacket are strategically placed to be slimming. This collection is definitely worth a closer look.
7 February 2020
How many ways can you cut a suit? It’s an existential question for Sisi Li, who founded her Nells Nelson collection two years ago and has more in common with the tailors of Savile Row than she does with the designers of Seventh Avenue. There’s no drama and theatrics to what Li creates, but season to season she does make subtle tweaks and changes. She wants her suits to function like uniforms for her clients, but the suits themselves aren’t uniform.For Spring her innovations include a wool-gauze double-breasted jacket cut like a shirt in the back (a nice mix of polish and ease) and a striped silk-cotton knit blazer that put more of an emphasis on comfort, especially when paired with elastic-waist joggers. The relaxed attitude continued in a group of jean-jacket silhouettes in Li’s signature water-repellent merino wool, which she color-blocked in different combinations of black and off-white. “This is my definition of happy,” Li said. “You don’t go from all black to turquoise.” Army green, though, is a different story. Li does a tuxedo for each new collection; this time around the point of distinction was its unexpected and quite appealing hue.
5 September 2019
Tailoring is the big story of the moment, in both menswear and women’s, but for Sisi Li, the designer of Nells Nelson, it’s no passing fad. That’s abundantly clear when you meet with Li; she wears her passions on her cashmere sleeve. And it’s more than obvious in the suits she makes in Italy, many from materials she has specially created for her burgeoning brand.Li’s innovation for Fall is in her knit suiting. Typically, of course, tailoring is constructed from wovens. The knits—both a lofty midnight charcoal herringbone and a sportier pinstripe rib—give her suits an appealingly easy mien. Not casual, Li would like to be clear; she doesn’t want her customer to look like they’re in sweats. But definitely easeful. At a showroom appointment, the model wore the suits with Converse high-tops, accentuating their relaxed attitude, but they’d stand up to a Chelsea boot, or even a heel. Another example of Li’s out-of-the-box thinking for Fall is her puffer. The name doesn’t really fit, for while the coat is lined in a thin, quilted layer of goose down, the outer layer is water-repellent, super-fine merino, the glossy finish of which looks like leather from a distance. Without bulk, it promises to keep its wearer quite warm.Li’s clothes do not speak loudly, and that’s entirely by design. Women who know suits and wear them will be impressed.
6 February 2019
Much has been written about the dearth of day clothes on the runways, and the anxiety longtime Céline shoppers have experienced since Phoebe Philo’s departure from the LVMH-owned label last December. “Where does the grown woman shop now?” the question goes. And, “Who’s flying the flag for minimalist chic?” Here’s an answer you haven’t heard before: Sisi Li. A fashion-industry veteran, Li has an eye for superfine materials and strong connections with Italian factories. Nells Nelson, which is named for her husband and son, is a designer brand with an unwavering point of view: Quality is key.As with her earlier collections, tailoring is the centerpiece for Spring. Li’s USP is the fine knit panels she adds to the underside of jacket sleeves, which create a narrow profile but don’t restrict movement; her one- and two-button blazers wear like cardigans: streamlined, yet easy. She’s built diversity into the new collection, cutting her suits and tuxedos in a range of fabrics including silk/wool jacquard, indigo denim, linen, chiffon, and a rather miraculous waterproof merino wool, that’s also stain- and wrinkle-resistant. At a showroom appointment she poured a glass of water on the sleeve of an icy gray tailored coat, and it streamed right off without leaving a mark. “I like materials that pamper you,” she says. These practically do the dry cleaning.Elsewhere, the tiniest details are finessed. See the horn buttons and belt buckles on a relaxed, generously skirted shirtdress and the subtle tone-on-tone striping on a tissue-thin white cashmere T-shirt dress. “It was important to me to build my own world and to stand behind my product,” Li says. She explains that she didn’t put anything in the collection that she wouldn’t have felt good about stamping with a giant Nells Nelson logo. Not to worry all you grown women out there: At this label, there’s not a logo in sight.
4 September 2018