Warm (Q3668)
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Warm is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Warm |
Warm is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
It’s been a while since we’ve heard anyone talk about “buy now, wear now,” that practical concept of designing clothes women can wear as soon as they arrive in stores. What was once something of a trendy buzz phrase has become the norm; no one is buying their fall wardrobe six months in advance anymore, nor is anyone buying a new “fall wardrobe.” Who has the time, the money, or the ego to revamp their closet every season? Fashion is in the midst of reconfiguring itself toward value, longevity, and plain old common sense; we need less stuff we can wear for longer, whether it’s a beautiful dress or a hardy pair of boots.As both a retailer and a designer, Winnie Beattie has been thinking along those lines for a few seasons. Fall 2020 was her boldest rejection of the “rules” of seasonal design: There wasn’t a single coat or sweater, and just a touch of velvet here and there. In fact, she opened with a light, breezy little cotton minidress, a reissue from Warm’s very first collection. In a chocolate brown floral print, it could easily be winterized with tights and boots, but it’s shipping in July. Beattie knows firsthand that girls will definitely still be looking for dresses on those 85-degree days.That said, they might be tired of pastels and summer whites by then, and the darker, richer palette of this collection will feel like a bit of a departure. Beattie said she was inspired by her time in London in the ’90s, particularly the way her Indian friends mixed gorgeous colors and prints with the era’s more minimalist pieces. Many of the items here will similarly lend themselves to being mixed and matched and worn year-round: The midi-dress in a swirling black, saffron, and violet floral was styled with suede knee-high boots, for instance, while a poppy slip dress was layered over a turtleneck. It was all a reflection of how Beattie and the women around her dress, adding layers or boots or jackets to their favorite pieces rather than reserving them for a few months of the year. Few designers have made as dramatic a shift as Beattie has—this was essentially a “summer collection”—but it’s fair to assume that this will be the new trend in the years to come.
14 February 2020
Is there anything better than golden hour in the summer? Maybe one thing: golden hour on the beach. To the uninitiated, it’s that perfect time of day just before sunset, when the light is soft and glowy, the air is still warm, and the sky looks like a painting. Warm’s Winnie Beattie, who spent most of her summer surfing in Amagansett, New York, with her three boys, says that golden hour always fills her with a sense of anticipation: There’s usually a dinner or beach party to go to, or maybe just a calm evening at home. She was thinking about those relaxed, happy feelings when she designed Spring, and she lifted the palette from her own photographs of Hamptons sunsets. The print she engineered for her first look blended shades of blush, lavender, and peach, mimicking the sky before sunset; later in the collection, it deepened to violet and navy, the colors of “blue hour,” when the sun has dipped far below the horizon.Color is an important part of Beattie’s design process; her customers come to her for unusual combinations (like this season’s ruffled blouse in turquoise, orange, and lilac), patchworked florals, and vintage-inspired tropical motifs. They’re unlike the prints you see elsewhere and lend an emotional, gotta-have-it quality to Beattie’s easy, wearable silhouettes. That’s why Spring’s departures were the solid pieces, like an acid-wash tangerine jean and a white sleeveless shirtdress with multicolored smocking around the waist. Beattie said the detail reminded her of what she wore as a kid, and the vaguely preppy silhouette was new for Warm, too. She wanted to bring in a few classic touches without getting into fussy, country club territory; a similar button-front dress in nubby cream-colored raw silk nailed the elegant, yet beachy balance nicely.
20 September 2019
Bohemian, wanderlust-y dresses are a dime a dozen these days, but it’s surprisingly difficult to find one that truly works in a city. That’s the main crux of Winnie Beattie’s Warm collections: Yes, she wears her groovy caftans and flowery minidresses on vacation in Costa Rica, Montauk, and Hawaii, but she gets just as much use out of them in Manhattan. That typically comes down to relatively simple silhouettes and a specific instinct for color: Resort’s blown-up hibiscus print came in a curious mix of burgundy, navy, orange, and lilac, for instance, not your usual brights and pastels. On a sleek, straight-fitting dress, the effect was graphic and elegant—hardly something you’d reserve just for the beach.The other prints followed a similar ideology, like a slate-blue and orange foulard Beattie lifted from a vintage blanket and a silky jacquard of ruby and cobalt flowers. Those rich colors and textures were a loose interpretation of what Beattie remembers seeing in fortune tellers’ salons (New Yorkers will be familiar); the quilted-over jumpsuit made from dozens of strips of printed textiles was particularly evocative of that layered, vaguely darker mood. It will look just right come November, when this collection begins arriving in stores. Beattie’s customer no doubt has a beachy getaway on her calendar, but she’s likely spending most of the winter not on vacation. She’ll be happy to wear these pieces right away, unlike other “Resort” items that basically demand a time share.
10 June 2019
Winnie Beattie’s new Warm collection was inspired by a single photograph of a girl at a concert—and you can’t even see her clothes. It’s more about the mood the photo suggests: She’s on someone’s shoulders, her hair’s a mess, and, importantly, she’s somewhere warm! Beattie was thinking about the free and comfortable way people dress for concerts (not Coachella, for the record). Something about hearing music outdoors inspires us to wear something vibrant yet low-key. The hallmarks of her Fall collection (which will arrive in stores in June, during peak summer concert season) were the A-line floral minidresses. Shown with high boots, they were a little ’60s-ish and will register as a shock to Warm shoppers who’ve been wearing below-the-knee hemlines for several years.What keeps a floral minidress from feeling basic is Beattie’s eye for color. A turtleneck mini in a blown-up leaf print combined unlikely shades of mauve, navy, and blush pink; a striped shirtdress came in a pleasingly weird mix of brown and violet; and the tiered trapeze dress merged giant blooms with dots of Lurex. That color story applied to the longer, more familiar dresses, too: A sleek, no-frills maxi dress had a “mushroom-y” background with surprising hits of teal and crimson. Beattie said it’s been difficult to get buyers to see the appeal of those strange colors, but the women who frequent her Nolita shop won’t need any convincing. They’ll appreciate the graphicness of the chocolate, periwinkle, and yellow floral trousers, too.
15 February 2019
Back in 2015, Winnie Beattie launched the in-house label for her Nolita shop, Warm, on the suspicion that she wasn’t the only woman who craved a wardrobe lined with flowery dresses to wear with Vans and stilettos alike. She was right on, of course: Fast forward a few years and a dozen collections later, and Warm has become a go-to label for stylish, in-the-know women seeking easy and statement-making dresses, jumpsuits, and separates—the kind that don’t scream “fashion” or feel like watered-down runway pieces. Beattie’s success isn’t just in the beautiful prints and flattering, inventive silhouettes (many of her dresses are reversible); it’s in her intense study of how women actually wear the clothes. She’s designing for real life, not the runway or Instagram.Pre-Fall got her thinking about summer nights, particularly the weddings, dinner parties, and events she finds herself attending in New York or Montauk. What does a Warm girl wear when she needs to dress up but the air is salty and it’s too hot to even think about wearing anything constricting? Beattie’s answers included a group of jumpsuits, midi skirts, and dresses in a hammered-silk floral that mixed black, gold, and bronze, so you can wear virtually any color shoes. With touches of velvet trim, they’ll transition easily into the cooler months, too.The charm of a Warm dress is typically in its day-to-night flexibility, but those were among the fanciest pieces Beattie has done—ditto the ivory and black jacquard dresses with color-blocked hibiscus florals. They’ll feel like a revelation to women who can’t abide a fussy cocktail frock—or the 4-inch heels to pair with them. Next summer, they’ll wear Beattie’s new evening pieces as she styled them here: with flat sandals and minimal jewelry.[
21 December 2018
When brides go shopping for wedding gowns, they’ll often have their hair and makeup done to get a better sense of how everything will come together on the big day. Winnie Beattie has nearly the opposite approach to designing her Warm collections: She envisions the clothes on women with wet hair and no makeup, preferably barefoot on the beach. “It always looks better to me that way,” she said, flipping through a handful of new cotton minidresses in punchy, retro-looking tropical prints. This summer she spent most of her weekends in Montauk, surfing all day, throwing a Warm dress over a bikini, and not overthinking it. But how many dresses in your closet would you actually feel comfortable stuffing in a beach bag or drenching with salt water? Save for a designated swim cover-up, probably few if any. Even the Resort collections that claim to go from “beach to bar” tend to feel a little too precious for the elements. So that was Beattie’s main prerogative for Spring: easy, unfussy, seriously summery items you can wear after a day in the waves.The Hawaiian dresses, textured-silk kimonos, ikat minis, and strapless linen frocks fit the bill, but you’ll notice they were often styled with metallic sandals or sleek T-straps in the lookbook. Somehow, they’d work for evening, too. That fluidity is Warm’s special sauce; with a quick swap of a shoe or earring, even the fanciest mixed-print gowns could go both ways. Nailing it often comes down to the relatively simple silhouettes, which are like blank canvases for Beattie’s wild prints. Her silks are usually textured, too, so they feel richer and more grown-up than regular flat silk. The grid-like weave on a jewel-toned floral dress, for instance, almost blurred the edges of the print, which might explain why even print-averse women are drawn to Beattie’s clothes.All of that should make packing a lot easier for ladies traveling in early 2019 for destination weddings or late-winter vacations. Even the most casual trips usually include at least one party or dinner where denim shorts won’t cut it, and a few Warm pieces—namely the lemonade chiffon dress, rose-printed strapless mini, silk harem pants, or fluttery blouses—would create plenty of possibilities. Oh, and for the plane, Warm girls should take Beattie’s latest jumpsuit: a bell-bottom style in superlight fleece. It’s like a sweatshirt and sweatpants wrapped into one—some might even joke that it looks like a Snuggie—but, of course, it’s undeniably chic.
6 September 2018
Most of Warm’s collections are chock-full of the bright, far-flung-feeling pieces we tend to associate with resortwear: cotton day dresses, billowing blouses, tropical-print kimonos. Naturally, you’d expect Winnie Beattie to go all-out with those “takeaway” items in an actual Resort collection, but the irony of this lineup was that it felt considerably more refined than her past efforts. Beattie wasn’t thinking about what she wanted to wear on vacation in Costa Rica; she was mentally packing for a business trip to London or Paris. It was evident in the way she styled the looks, swapping her usual Vans for stilettos.That shift partly reflects her own changing style: Right now, she’s feeling cleaner lines, higher necklines, and slinkier fabrics like jacquard, satin, and burnout velvet. As a result, there were fewer prints, but fans of Warm’s head-to-toe florals won’t be lacking for options. A few blouses and skirts came in a vibrant wildflower motif, and she introduced a new “love letters” print with tiny hand-scribbled stars and hearts.Still, she wants Warm to evolve into a collection that caters to every aspect of a woman’s life, from the printed voile dress she throws on in the morning to the elegant navy jumpsuit she wears to a wedding. On that note, the most surprising new looks were the silk separates with just one or two blown-up orchids; you won’t find many “true” solids at Warm—even the aforementioned navy jumpsuit had a subtle floral shimmer—but compared to Beattie’s usual kaleidoscopic prints, these were as minimal as it gets. The tie-neck blouse and trousers, in particular, stood out; they nodded to the current pajama trend but would feel a lot more unexpected at a holiday party.
6 June 2018
Fall marks Winnie Beattie’s first solo design effort for Warm. Her partner of three years, Tracy Feith, departed the label (on good terms!), so the new collection is Beattie’s most personal. It mirrors both what she wants to wear, and what she intuits other women will want soon enough, too. Her beloved Mott Street store of the same name—and her career in fashion and beauty public relations—has given Beattie something of a sixth sense for understanding and anticipating the market, and her instincts are spot-on. Right now, she’s feeling for sleeker, less frilly silhouettes, like lean jumpsuits, high-neck blouses, and long-sleeved dresses. In her usual graphic, flowery, painterly custom prints, those simplified shapes weren’t just easier to wear, but they made a more confident statement, too. (As an added bonus, many of them are reversible.)The biggest departure for Beattie this season was something that’s pretty basic for most labels: black. “I really never wear black,” she said. Her black-on-black jacquard caught the light with its dimensional, far-from-basic finish. On a drapey jacket and wide trousers, it was the Warm girl’s version of a tuxedo. Also new: a long, pouf-sleeved jacket made, ingeniously, of polar fleece. We swear it felt as light and lofty as cashmere. Beattie said she’d wear it on a plane, or over one of her wildest printed dresses to run around Soho. Consider it a new alternative to a hoodie or trench.
15 February 2018
Most New Yorkers know Warm the store before Warm the brand. As both shop owner and designer of her in-house label, Winnie Beattie has a unique, 360-degree view of what’s happening in retail. Her Warm boutique in Nolita is the ne plus ultra of personal, unfussy, discovery-filled local shopping; she sells the things she loves, from high-end designer dresses to hand-picked vintage blouses to beauty and home products by virtually unknown New York brands. Her low-key luxe collection hangs in its own little walk-in closet, but she also sells it to retailers around the world, which gives her a sense of how department stores and European buyers are evolving.All that to say, she knows that pre-fall is a misnomer; these clothes ship in the summer. She recalled getting last year’s pre-fall shipment in June out in Amagansett, and had zero use for the velvet-trimmed gowns and super-luxe hammered silk jumpsuits. At that time of year, women want breezy dresses and gorgeous colors—not a preview of what they’ll be wearing in November. So Beattie designed pre-fall 2020 as a “true” summer collection. Her now-signature scarf prints got an earthy update on a lightweight silk gown, with shades of beige, camel, and black mingling against soft white. She pointed out that she’d wear it right now with knee-high boots; year-round wearability also feels increasingly important. Many of the dresses here were cotton, not silk, and came in easy, away-from-the-body shapes, meaning they’ll actually make sense to throw on when it’s 85 degrees. (Ditto the terry cloth dresses and jumpsuits.)Two pieces in particular are worth calling out. The first featured a new embroidery: From afar, the coral balloon-sleeve dress looked like a print, but the tropical floral motif was actually comprised of tiny white stitches. The other standout was a tiered, ankle-length tank in indigo tie-dye with narrow stripes of deadstock ikat cotton, an eco-friendly twist on Beattie’s usual mixed-up prints. A baja hoodie was similarly updated with a band of deadstock orange fabric. As the sustainability conversation continues to grow, it will be interesting to see how Beattie builds on the concept.
12 December 2019
In her showroom, Winnie Beattie was wearing a swirling orchid-print Warm sweatshirt with matching silk pants, gold hoops, and checkered Vans. Her new lookbook is styled in a similarly bold-yet-low-key vein: silky dresses with leather slides, ruffled skirts with slip-on sneakers. “Then there’s the girl who will wear everything with Manolos!” she said. That fluidity has been a key ingredient in Warm’s success: Dresses are the label’s bread and butter, but Beattie won’t make one that can’t be worn just as easily with stilettos or with sneakers.Her new Pre-Fall dresses met that requirement and were subtly, invariably gorgeous. Women who have been collecting Warm dresses since Beattie and Tracy Feith launched the collection will find armfuls to love here. She pointed out a few styles in airy, block-printed cotton, which were inspired by her personal collection of vintage Indian frocks. Other cotton dresses came in mixed florals with ruffled sleeves or hems, but almost everything had a narrower, more streamlined silhouette. Beattie is still into ruffles and bows, but reined them in to ensure they don’t look too “cute.” A few of the best pieces lacked any frills whatsoever, like a long-sleeved burgundy gown with vibrant placed florals; a kimono in swirling navy and ivory jacquard; and a glossy, single-sleeved top and trousers in a surprising mix of emerald, blush, and black.Those cleaner lines should help Warm resonate with women outside of major fashion cities, too. “After growing up in the Midwest, I know this dress just needs to look great to a woman who’s seeing it on a hanger in Chicago or St. Louis,” she explained. Not all designers possess that kind of retail know-how, and we have a feeling it’s working to Beattie’s advantage.
17 January 2018
You may have missed it in the collective meltdown following the presidential election, but on November 12 of this year, a documentary calledGivenwas released. For some viewers, the story of two surfers—Aamion and Daize Goodwin—taking their baby and toddler son on a far-flung, 15-country tour of the world and its surf spots may have served as an antidote to their panic and despair. Amid all the talk of locking up borders, here was one family determined to throw their arms around the globe and teach their children radical openness. For Warm's Winnie Beattie and Tracy Feith,Givenwas a gift in another way—Goodwin’s travels supplied them with no-brainer inspiration for their latest collection.No-brainerbecause Warm is a brand already rooted in the fantasy of a footloose life, much of it spent by the waves. Alsono-brainerbecause theGivennarrative offered Beattie and Feith an excuse to be globe-trotting in their references. Working for the most part in a casual tone, the duo really went for it with their prints and patterns, drawing on traditional aesthetics from India, Jamaica, Africa, Japan, the bayou, the Aegean, and Provence. A satin-detailed sundress in an Indian sari print shared its easygoing mood and bohemian outlook with a Jamaican block-printed smock dress trimmed in multiple colors of lace. Likewise, a jumpsuit with Delphic embroidery seemed not at all out of place beside another jumpsuit of indigo ikat detailed with colorful thread.At an appointment today, Beattie and Feith took pains to point out that they wanted to avoid making clothes that looked like they’d been purchased from a souvenir stand. Their use of various cultural aesthetics was respectful in that way—staying true to their signature Warm silhouettes, they coded their riffs as personal appreciation, rather than cold appropriation. The collection was joyful in the sense that it wanted to welcome the world into the Warm family. Silently and smiling, it sent a message.
8 September 2017
Warm has earned a following thanks to the excellence of its dresses. This outing may well be remembered for its pants. Tracy Feith and Winnie Beattie offered a lot of new shapes here—superwide-leg twills; baggy skater jeans; broad, pleat-fronted silk track bottoms; and nattiest of all, low-slung, pajama-style pants done in a crisp polyester floral print. The pant emphasis was the strongest indication that Beattie and Feith were trying to avoid a rut: Without shifting the trademark refined yet laid-back tone of Warm’s clothes, they were moving away from some of the brand’s established proportions, fabrications, patterns, and silhouettes.The movement was evident in the collection’s dresses, skirts, and tops as well. Blouson was traded in for a more tailored shirt fit, and the line’s signature long, easy-going frocks weren’t voluminous so much as generously draped or slouched. Other dresses, meanwhile, pulled the dimensions way, way in—to wit, the excellent floral tank dress with a skirt of subtly asymmetric tiers. Pattern-wise, the florals resonated with the ones that Warm has offered in the past, but their graphic quality had more in common with this collection’s abstract-print silks and nautical tees and hoodies, both of which marked an evolution in the Warm-brand vocabulary. Slowly but surely, Feith and Beattie are building out that vocabulary such that Warm feels less of an homage to a familiar jet-set bohemian and more like an introduction to a new woman who seems as though she'd be interesting to know.
2 June 2017
One mark of a brand’s success is its ability to significantly update itself without losing its core identity. The only question mark that’s been hovering over Warm, the brand Winnie Beattie and Tracy Feith launched to much acclaim in 2015, was whether the designers would be able to evolve beyond its instantly signature, Malibu dream-life looks. This Warm collection went a long way toward answering that question: The shift in tone was notable, but not head spinning. It seemed that the Warm girl’s dream life had simply shifted to another ZIP code.More accurately, it had shifted to another postcode. Feith and Beattie seemed to be fixating on a particular London moment here—that mid-to-late-’90s moment when London It girls like Kate Moss were bopping between Portobello Market and the Groucho Club in a mix of sporty looks, vintage check flannel, and brain-mulchingly expensive print dresses from cult boutique Voyage. Feith and Beattie put a nice polish on that eclectic aesthetic, trading in their typical pastoral prints for Orientalist ones, and glamming up the sporty looks by producing them in velvet or embellishing them with ruffles. And for all the trademark Warm diaphanousness, this collection boasted a remarkable nuance of cut—namely the velvet or denim pants with their just-so waterfalls of flounces, one of this season’s standout items, to be sure.The duo were just as precise in their approach to print. Another engaging set of looks mixed tea dresses in graphic batiks with contrasting slips, while silk pajama-style separated mashed-up chinoiserie and griffon-starring wallpaper prints. The effect was a bit de trop, but that was by design—this collection was taking dead aim at a louche, hedonistic vibe. Which made it all the more clever that Beattie and Feith thought to cut the headiness with some crisper items, like shearlings that mimicked the look of Patagonia fleece; trumpet-sleeved, flared-leg sweat suits; and sharp poplin shirting (the first the brand has produced). Feith and Beattie know when to say when. That, too, is a mark of a brand’s success.
11 February 2017
Pause, for a moment, and let your mind wander back to more innocent times. October, say. Or the summer of 1970, when Janis Joplin, the Grateful Dead, The Flying Burrito Bros., and other bands traveled between tour dates via train, a journey recorded in the documentaryFestival Express. That film was the starting point for the latest Warm collection, an inviting bit of fashion escapism if ever there were any.Warm’s Winnie Beattie and Tracy Feith have pre-existing escapist tendencies: The label’s raison d'être is to provide city-friendly apparel to those who are spiritually on vacation in Montauk, Malibu, Biarritz. This collection expanded on that theme, with lots of breezy cotton voile and silk sundresses and caftans, and liberal helpings of vintage florals and global-boho patterns of ikat and batik. ButFestival Expressinspired a few psychedelic accents—washed-out purple pajama-style separates, melodramatic sleeves, a bit of velvet, a couple vaguely acid-trip prints.For all the loosey-goosey atmospherics, though, it’s worth noting that Beattie and Feith are, themselves, sober and specific in the way they design. As with previous Warm outings, this one was elevated by its details—to wit, the squares of Japanese denim on a ruffled batik dress, or the careful print placement and just-so gathers on a washed-out silk frock. The duo are also canny in their use of material, albeit in hidden ways: They quilted their kimono jacket in French terry leftover from their sweats, both for waste-reduction’s sake and to introduce more pliancy to the silhouette, and the yards of remnant fabric from their dresses went into reversible bikinis and kicky handkerchief tops and tap shorts. Good thinking.
7 December 2016
Winnie Beattie and Tracy Feith had timing on their side as they showed the latestWarmcollection today. First off, with summer ebbing and theNew York Fashion Weekkickoff inducing a “back to school” feeling, the beachy duds proffered by Feith and Beattie seemed even more aspirational lifestyle than usual: It was hard to look at the duo’s loose, smocked dresses or striped gabardine shorts and not heave a mental sigh of longing for a life spent next to the waves. Beyond that, the scorching weather in New York City today endowed the collection with an entirely utilitarian appeal. With temps in the high 80s, a gossamer jumpsuit of a tropical floral silk/cotton, or a tank dress in printed Hawaiian floral, seemed just the thing.This collection marks the first anniversary for Warm, and much to Beattie and Feith’s credit, the label already seems like an old friend. Warm owns its particular upscale beachcomber niche, and the breezy dress up/dress down frocks in this latest outing were predictably appealing. The element of novelty was provided by the updates to the prints (more graphic, in general, this time out) and the subtleties of make and detail, like the loose smocking on a spaghetti strap top, or the touch of seam tape at the hem of a palm-printed dress. The news, such as it was, could be found in the expanded range of casual separates. Pieces in washed-out ikat or that striped gabardine had a nice rough-and-tumble quality, while the color-blocked terry sweats were basically the Platonic ideal of SoCal whatevs-ness. According to the calendar, summer may be on its way out—but it’s endless summer in Warm world.
8 September 2016
Three seasons in, Warm maestros Winnie Beattie and Tracy Feith are so sure of the fundamentals of their brand, they’re ready to stretch themselves. That much was clear from the duo’s new collection, which broadened the scope of the Warm mandate by expanding its range of tones. If the Warm sweet spot is a blowsy printed dress that can be dressed up or down to suit the mood or occasion, Beattie and Feith edged slightly outside of it, creating looks with either a much more casual or decidedly more formal mien.The formal end of the spectrum was embodied in two looks. One was a very fine black-and-cream dress of paneled silk and lace, with a scarf collar and tiered flounces. The other, exuding a more summery tone, was a “kimono tux,” as Beattie termed it at an appointment today, made from ombré-dyed lightweight tweed. On the casual end of things, Beattie and Feith created unfussy dresses mixing printed silk and jersey and striped, tracksuit-style ribbed trim. These looks had plenty of appeal, but better bets were the smock top and cinched pants in supersoft denim, and printed short and capris with an elasticated waist. A pair of lei-printed capris in cobalt blue, paired with a matching tank top, provided a polished yet fuss-free answer to the nagging question of what, exactly, one is meant to wear to a semi-dressy beachside dinner.In other words, that tank-top-and-capri set put Beattie and Feith square back in the comfort zone. A flounced maxi-dress of mixed white floral prints would also work as an over-the-bikini solution for date dressing in St. Tropez or Malibu; so too the bias-cut dress in tonal striped linen, with its ruffled floral silk hem, and the more tailored, long-sleeve frock in black, with its Ossie Clark–esque floral print. It’s a narrow furrow, that niche of breezy, just-dressy-enough looks, but Feith and Beattie plow it very well.
13 June 2016
Scientists should study women coming upon a collection of clothes that instantly, forthrightly appeal to them. Do the patterns of our brain waves resemble those of ancient tribes stirred to bloodlust by the distant hoof beats of delicious prey? It must be so, for the reaction to last season’s debut collection by Warm seemed to conjure something primal in the women who discovered the printed frocks devised by brand guru Winnie Beattie and designed by Tracy Feith. Deep in our hearts, all of us—or many of us, at any rate—desire to look like free-spirited Laurel Canyon dwellers from the enclave’s Joni Mitchell heyday. Warm speaks directly to that desire.The label’s sophomore outing doubled down on that vibe. The printed frocks were a little more fitted this time out, and a bit more elaborate in their detail, which ran to touches of quilting and lace and trills of ruffle about collars. There was also an update in the shift from maxi dresses to jumpsuit silhouettes, and the introduction of ikat and striped boucle deployed in flares, dungarees, and surfer dude hoodies. Beattie and Feith also found clever ways to give their collection some cold-weather heft, without weighing down its gossamer appeal—notably, by mixing in some substantial layering pieces, like a shearling sweatshirt slit at the sides, and some featherweight ones, such as a ski striped turtleneck. Gunne Sax was a distant reference here, given the emphasis on high necks and poet sleeves and florals, but the emphasis on sheer materials and functional shapes served to modernize the prairie aesthetic, while the refined finish of these clothes elevated their tone. These were looks for hippie aristocrats, and they communicated straight to the fashion id.
11 February 2016