Vince (Q3641)
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Vince is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Vince |
Vince is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
design director
Blame it on the low-key, subdued resort season, where the look of the moment was a sweatshirt and joggers, but in the early days of a mostly-virtual New York Fashion Week, there’s a palpable sense of optimism and change in the air. Designers seem hopeful that better days are coming in 2021. Even Vince, a brand that rarely deviates from its minimal, neutral signatures, is trying some new things.On a Zoom call from the company’s Los Angeles studio, Caroline Belhumeur pulled up a mood board covered with Agnes Pelton paintings of the California desert: soft, vaguely mystical landscapes with barely-there pastels and glowing light. The artist’s palette informed the collection’s ethereal lavenders and celadon greens, and Pelton’s meditative approach inspired the broader theme of “bringing brilliance to the quotidian.” To the Vince shopper browsing these clothes IRL in January, the takeaways will be more straightforward: the narrower silhouettes, ultra-feminine touches of lace, and vintage-inspired details, like a lean, collarless blazer (inspired by an old Armani find) and ’40s-ish ruching on slip skirts. If the deeper necklines and slinkier, sexier silhouettes seem like an odd impulse after six months (or more) of quarantine sweats and leggings, it’s also true that fashion is often the direct inverse of whatever came before it. By 2021, the hope is that we’ll be feeling lighter and ready for what’s next, eager to shed our heavy winter layers for something freer and easier.
10 September 2020
An Italianate elegance is emerging as a subtle theme for fall 2020, first at the men’s shows in Europe and now at even the most American of brands, like Vince. Caroline Belhumeur found her inspiration in the rich, marble-filled homes of Milan, specifically the Villa Necchi, where the 2009 Tilda Swinton filmI Am Lovewas shot. Belhumeur was taken with the estate’s juxtaposition of richness and restraint, ultra-fine art mingling with clean lines and natural wood. For the look-book shoot, she and her team found a John Lautner home in Los Angeles with similar qualities: walls faced with sage and russet marble, exposed wooden beams, sleek furnishings.The palette and textures of the clothes were developed knowing they’d be photographed in that setting: nearly a dozen shades of brown with icy celadon, dusty lilac, and cream; fluffy shearling and buttery leather with glossy satin and brushed wool. It’s the touch and feel of the clothes that often gets women in the door at Vince, but seeing it all photographed in a real home (albeit an exceedingly beautiful one) made them look particularly livable.That might help explain why so many designers are looking to interiors right now; Jonathan Anderson at Loewe comes to mind, as do Marco Zanini, Tory Burch, and Adam Lippes. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that designers are into décor—it’s simply another form of design and aesthetics—but it suggests they’re thinking differently about clothes, making things that better fit into our lives and surroundings.Beyond the colors and fabrics, it’s smaller tweaks in proportion that tend to change each season at Vince. Belhumeur is still feeling peak-lapel suits—this time with a bit more padding in the shoulders—as well as button-down shirts with extended collars. She introduced new touches of femininity with cowl-neck satin blouses, lace-knit evening separates, and satin sarong skirts, but much of fall was comprised of what Vince does best: straightforward, chic, eminently wearable clothes.
5 February 2020
Vince is a brand rooted in timeless wardrobe staples, so the big story each season tends to be about color and texture. Spring 2020’s palette of beige, chocolate, mint, orchid, and cerulean was lifted from Javier Senosiain’s Casa Orgánica in Mexico City, which also became the setting of the lookbook. Creative director Caroline Belhumeur noted there isn’t a single straight line in the house: The walls, windows, and even floors are curved, with similarly amorphous furniture and fixtures inside. After discovering it on a trip to Mexico earlier this year, Belhumeur was instantly taken with the strange, earthy interiors and the way the sunlight filtered through the rounded windows; at certain times of day, it cast a pale yellow light, while the hue intensified as the afternoon dragged on.Spring was a bit like distilling those memories into visual, wearable statements. The Vince customer may not know anything about Senosiain or his house—the challenge for Vince going forward will be to figure out how to tell these stories to more customers—but she’ll be drawn to the unusual colors. A silky mint blouse and lime pants made a bold statement despite essentially being pajamas, while other looks combined brights with neutrals: lemon and camel, lilac and taupe. In terms of texture, you expect to find the loftiest cashmere, the crispest cotton, and the supplest leather, but spring introduced another material: crochet. A narrow crochet tank dress brought in the natural, uneven textures of Mexico City architecture, though Belhumeur was careful to keep it from veering “too crafty.” It helped that Heather Kemesky was modeling the clothes—though you may not have recognized her at first. She recently lightened her hair and let it grow into a shag, but her attitude hasn’t changed a bit. She looked most like herself in the black belted leather jacket, which was at once luxe, tough, and a bit androgynous.
11 September 2019
Since Caroline Belhumeur took the helm of Vince’s creative direction in 2017, the label’s collections have become more about a feeling than just good clothes. To wit, Resort’s moodboard was pinned not with photos of models or magazine tears, but with images of Mamma Andersson’s soft, abstracted paintings of gardens and homes, all in a warm palette of beige, brown, and hunter green. Belhumeur said she was drawn to the way Andersson gives simple, everyday scenes a dreamy quality—a sentiment that lines up pretty well with Vince’s m.o. These are straightforward, wearable clothes that manage to feel lush and aspirational thanks to sumptuous fabrics, a considered palette, and tweaked proportions.Standouts for Resort (an expansive collection that will be released over the course of a few months) included a buttery leather shirt that could be worn as a button-down or jacket; cropped gauchos in soft wool and silk; and an expanded range of tailoring, which is something of a new category for Vince. Belhumeur and her team were wise not to dive head-first into the suiting trend when it first heated up; it’s a category that requires serious skill and attention to detail. They’ve spent the past couple of years figuring out how to make a suit that felt inherently Vince: sharp, yet comfortable; spun from custom yarns; and cut in a way that would accommodate a stiletto or a sneaker. Resort’s winner was a plush, gray-flecked blazer and matching trousers with a bit of slouch—topped off with a matching overcoat. The look wasn’t as “extra” as that sounds; in fact, it felt a lot like 2020’s cozy, modern version of a three-piece suit.
5 June 2019
During a preview at Vince’s Fifth Avenue HQ, Caroline Belhumeur reported that customers are responding positively to her experiments with color. The days of black, camel, and gray everything are pretty much over at Vince. Instead, the brand is leaning into its Los Angeles roots, from the sunny new colors to the way it shoots each collection and campaign. Fall 2019 was photographed on a rocky beach near Malibu, where models in quilted puffers, velvet slip dresses, and relaxed “suits” reclined in beach chairs or stood in mossy tide pools. The way those soft textures and lilac, “aloe,” and burgundy colors looked against the raw, craggy backdrop was as important to Belhumeur as the designs themselves. She said it was all inspired by the Spanish sculptor Eduardo Chillida, known for his massive, abstract iron works in public spaces. HisComb of the Windsculpture built into a cliff on the Cantabrian Sea was her specific jumping-off point, both for the lookbook setting and the palette; she liked how the rusty iron looked against the ocean’s pale turquoise, and how its clean, industrial lines contrasted with the natural landscape. The knife-pleated aloe silk looks were a successful interpretation.It’s a vibe that will resonate with a lot of women scrolling through Vince’s website or Instagram. For such a clean brand, it’s important to have a dreamy, emotional pull; it has to be about more than just clothes. That said, there were pieces here that felt inventive and surprising all on their own. With the tailoring trend in mind, Belhumeur wanted to figure out what a “Vince suit” should look like, and landed on a few soft, ultralight wool jackets with matching pin-tucked trousers. Some had drawstrings at the waist, like a cross between sweats and “real pants.” Maybe they wouldn’t pass at a hedge fund, but those suits would be a cool, considered break from standardized “business causal” uniforms. Or, if you work at a tech start-up that prides itself onnothaving a dress code, you could wear one with a sweater and never feel overdressed.
9 February 2019
Pre-Fall is just getting started, but we can already guess the season’s big color: orange. Every shade of it: Creamsicle, traffic cone, mango, nearly neon, and the rich, warm ginger hue on Vince’s new jackets, slip dresses, and high-rise trousers. A few years back, you’d never expect to find orange in a Vince store; the brand was known for reliable shades of gray and black. But since Caroline Belhumeur joined the company as creative director in 2017 (alongside brand director Tomoko Ogura), Vince has been leaning in a more luxurious, nuanced direction. It’s a little more “fashion,” sure, but not in the sense that Belhumeur is churning out trends and statement pieces. Instead, she’s introducing genuine surprises, from those slightly off shades of orange to Pre-Fall’s new silk “basketball shorts.”These are practical surprises, of course. A cropped orange trench had a hidden strap inside so you can loop the jacket over your shoulder like a backpack if you’re overheating (lest you forget, Vince is a Los Angeles brand). The basketball shorts looked surprisingly wearable, too; they’re meant for a blazer or a chunky sweater, not the actual court.Belhumeur said she was thinking about pre-Y2K style; there were athletic references, bomber jackets, layered camisoles, and knit “sports bras” (pro tip: don’t wear them to Equinox). Also very late-’90s was the collection’s other big color: brown. You could almost picture Carolyn Bessette Kennedy wearing Look 19’s sleek, collarless whiskey leather jacket, caramel silk trousers, and periwinkle sweater.
4 December 2018
Vince could not host a presentation this season due to the coronavirus pandemic. In these extenuating circumstances, Vogue Runway has made an exception to its policy and is writing about this collection via photos and remote interviews.Caroline Belhumeur and her Vince team started working on the resort 2021 collection back in November, long before Merriam-Webster was adding words like “PPE” and “coronavirus” to the dictionary. But their initial concept turned out to be almost prophetic: Belhumeur said they’d been thinking about entertaining at home, something we’ll be doing a lot of this holiday season. Her mood board was pinned with Lalique perfume bottles, louche ’80s decor, and Edward Steichen’s silver gelatin photographs of women in the ’20s and ’30s in bias-cut slips, caftans, and subtle jewelry. The effect was of a more comfortable, low-key kind of indulgence: “There’s a simplicity to it, but also this richness,” Belhumeur said on a Zoom call from Los Angeles. “We were thinking about that moment you’re getting ready for your guests, or maybe you’re greeting them at the door, but you’re barefoot.”If a ball gown or sequins felt like “too much” for at-home entertaining in 2019, they’ll feel categorically wrong this year. Of course, most women probably haven’t given much thought to their holiday wardrobes yet; the past few months have shown us that everything can change in a day, and by Christmas, we may be living through the second “wave” of the virus. Or maybe we won’t. One thing we know for sure is that we’ll be fortunate to spend any time at all with family and friends—and we might want to dress in a way that’s celebratory, but not, you know, ridiculous. Vince’s cowl-neck satin dresses and silky suits might fit the bill, channeling the relaxed luxury of Steichen’s photographs; in the look book, they’re shown in a real house, often without shoes.Since it wasn’t possible to shoot on location, Belhumeur shipped the clothes to the Brooklyn artist Conie Vallese and gave her free rein to style them while her partner, Josh Olins, photographed her around their home. The results have an intimacy and casualness you don’t get in a typical look book, and a sense that you’re seeing the clothes as they’d really be worn. Without a team of stylists and assistants on hand, a poplin button-down hangs the way it might in “real life,” while a crushed velvet dress looks exceedingly wearable as Vallese reclines on a sectional.
Olins’s style plays up other textures too, like the crushed chiffon of a blush midi-dress. It isn’t easy to see in these photos, so Belhumeur is sending swatches to buyers so they can feel the curious quality.Belhumeur is among many designers who have shipped their collections to friends or models to self-style and photograph this season. If it began as a solution to a problem, they might want to consider making it a habit in the future. The clothes feel more alive on a “real person,” even if that person does happen to be as stunning as Vallese. Knowing there wasn’t a full team on set—just a photographer and subject, and maybe someone to help with lighting—should only make women feel more confident about trying these looks in their own homes.
15 June 2020
The big news at Vince usually comes in the smallest of gestures: a peaked lapel here, a longer collar there, an especially shiny new satin. Caroline Belhumeur’s mission since joining the brand in 2017 has been to inject some warmth and sensuality into the clothes while maintaining Vince’s ethos of simplicity, wearability, and timelessness. On paper, that sounds like a tall task, and probably not the most creatively stimulating one. But Belhumeur and her team delight in getting the texture of a crinkled silk right, or finding the perfect horn buttons for a double-breasted blazer, or mixing unlikely colors together. They think about how the clothes will be worn as they’re designing them, which isn’t always the case elsewhere.As a result, much of the appeal comes down to styling and what feels fresh to the eye: Pre-fall’s oversized jade suit looked that much cooler with a blush silk shirt unbuttoned underneath, collar out. With a T-shirt, it wouldn’t have been nearly as compelling. Belhumeur likes to think about solutions too: She was missing a lightweight, slightly oversized jacket to wear when she wasn’t in the mood for a denim one, so she designed a “jean jacket” in a softer textured cotton. She also experimented with what “Vince eveningwear” might look like, and came up with a ruby silk slip with an eggplant organza shell layered on top that held more interest than your typical ’90s slip. Still, it’s the daytime stuff that Vince does best. By next spring, many women will have adopted the blazer-over-dress combination seen here, and those neutral-toned satin button-downs will be hard to keep in stock. Styled with pleated trousers, flat sandals, and gold earrings, the shirts nailed the ideal mix of ease and polish that can be so hard to find in this market.
3 December 2019
The days of “elevated basics” are over at Vince. A better way to describe the label’s cashmere knits, elegant blouses, and soft tailoring now might be “low-key luxury.” Caroline Belhumeur joined as creative director about a year ago, and has been working closely with Vince’s brand director, Tomoko Ogura (who came on two years ago, after her 12-year stint at Barneys), to elevate and refine the label—and, at the same time, bring it a bit more down to earth. Vince was formerly associated with workwear and simple, upscale—but not always covetable—pieces, but the brand’s Spring 2019 collection had a sense of warmth.The palette was warm, for starters: olive, poppy, every shade of sand, and a glow-y marigold satin. But there was also a new softness, both in fabric and silhouette, that gave the clothes a different attitude, rooted in Vince’s California heritage. (Did you know Vince is a Los Angeles brand? A lot of people don’t.) A few cashmere hoodies and light puffer jackets touched on L.A.’s active lifestyle, but dressing for the West Coast is really about finding that balance between undone and elegant.Knitwear is the most familiar category for Vince; the luxe, summer-weight cashmere and merino knits here were reliably good. The proportions have changed a bit, though: Belhumeur scaled things down and designed knitwear with an eye toward the trousers, skirts, and silk basketball shorts you’d actually wear with it. On that note, the cargo-style midi skirts stood out, and there were a few pairs of excellent new pants: low-slung jeans, belted pin-striped trousers, and a silky, wide-leg pair with a drawstring waist. Those pieces were simple, sure—maybe you’d even call them “basics”—but they were also seriously desirable, and that might be the key difference between old and new Vince.
14 September 2018