Audra (Q3787)
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Audra is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Audra |
Audra is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Fashion can feel surface-level at times, but not for Audra Noyes. Often designers will find a new reference or muse with each season, but Noyes’s inspiration remains consistently close to home: her own family. From the very beginning her collections have revolved around a conversation between the designer and her late father, and for fall her recently passed grandmother joined the dialogue.“Through this collection, I have really channeled my grief and thought about the legacy of someone who has really given me a [way] to conduct myself,” Noyes said. The cinnamon-colored prairie dress and off-white bow blouse came with silk jacquard embellishments that spelled out her grandmother’s name, Ruth, in sign language symbols, a nod to the physical challenges Ruth overcame. Another new print inspired by Ruth’s polished taste—aptly named “Ruth’s Recipe”—was comprised of dainty mementos hand-illustrated by Noyes herself, then spun into an airy maxi dress. “I wanted to bring luminosity to the fact that my grandmother championed me, and also had deep gratitude for every little detail of life,” Noyes added.Ruth also influenced Audra’s signature suiting: As a woman working in the male-dominated workforce of the 1950s, she persevered and broke boundaries. The trim collarless jackets with cargo pockets were a nod to that era, shown in brown and gray checks and styled with full circle skirts. Both looks offered a new, elegant take on the season’s big tailoring trend. Less referential were the brighter, bolder pieces mixed in, like a paisley lamé puffer and a billowing cherry shirtdress. Noyes was looking for a bit of optimism: “This season was as much about reflecting on my grandmother’s legacy as it was about looking forward to the future of my brand.”
17 February 2020
Internal conflict is rarely easy, but it makes for compelling art. When Audra Danielle Noyes began to plot out her Spring 2020 collection, she picked tension as its uniting theme. Clothes focused on the friction between states of being could have been frenzied, but Noyes’s refined womenswear has always tended towards the serene. With Pu Xinyu prints and a verse from Walt Whitman’s “Song of the Self” pinned to her mood board, she set out to broaden her label’s horizons.The departure meant turning up the saturation with the addition of vibrant shades of emerald green and raspberry. New pieces like ombré separates and waxed trenches with matching bucket hats continued the shift. For Noyes, each element represented a specific point of reference. “The peaceful moments were informed by the artwork, specifically the Japanese gardens,” she said. “This is brighter than [what] I’ve done before, but going back to the poem, there was joy and chaos in the tension of that moment, something I wanted to translate into the clothes and their color palette.”Menswear came to the forefront, with Noyes returning to a familiar inspiration: her late father. “It’s drawing inspiration from his tailoring, playing with those classic suiting moments and a nod to the Oxford shirt,” said Noyes. “I think that is where I started as a creator, playing with his suits and ties. I was able to bring that back into this collection.” That idea came through in short-sleeve shirts with ties built into the collars and jackets with rounded cuffs. The borrowed-from-the-boys concept even got a little playful thanks to double-breasted blazers with a suspender strap extending from the lapel.Pieces that merged disparate ideas proved the most interesting. Noyes’s belted blouses received an East-meets-West update via kimono-esque sashes and draping, while spartan T-shirt dresses got an outré touch of fringe. These moments of contrast didn’t feel especially tense, but they looked effortless and elegant.
5 September 2019
When Audra Noyes approaches a subject, it’s never a straightforward exploration. The rustic beauty of the farmstead may inform Noyes’s Fall 2019 collection, but those expecting a rehash of prairie-chic motifs will find themselves disappointed. Noyes’s familial connection to the season’s theme (she descends from several generations of farmers) helped her avoid many of its visual trappings. Where fashion’s interpretation of the homestead typically leans too romantic—repeat viewings ofDays of Heavenwill do that—Noyes tapped into the utilitarian side of things. Costumes are nice, but the practicality and ease of workwear are things modern women can always use more of.Several uniform signatures were incorporated into the mix; multi-pocket jackets, pleated skirts, and brass hardware added to the sense of functionality, but prettiness had its place too. The lightweight blouses and satiny cocktail looks that have become standards within the label were present in shades of rust and lavender, accented with delicate touches like reflective paillettes. Hidden on cuffs for a daytime to evening quick change or subtly worked onto the seams of dresses, they provided a whimsical touch, as did a few fresh fabrications. Reflective Lurex worked into wool gave Noyes’s pleated tartan pieces depth, while multicolor bouclé elevated outerwear.The real inventiveness of Noyes’s technique came through within her prints. The late Moira Dryer’s abstract paintings on sheets of plywood served as the inspiration for the patterns which featured aerial shots of farmland deconstructed into color gradients. Worked onto gauzy blouses and smocked separates, they offered an artistic take on the historical reference point that even the most jaded city dweller would find appealing.
5 February 2019
The idea of seeing the world through the eyes of a child often denotes a kind of naive worldview, but for Audra Danielle Noyes, the concept goes beyond innocence. For her 10th collection, Noyes centered on the “infancy of sight” as a theme, the way the human eye moves from viewing things in black and white to slowly being able to perceive color and complex shapes. In lesser hands, that could have meant a swift move from neutrals to neons, but Noyes’s approach was nuanced. A subtle progression that began with oversize polka dots covering blouses and loose-fitting culottes. Abstracted into fragments or placed in irregular bursts, the circles appeared just slightly out of focus—which was precisely the point.Noyes is skilled at revitalizing the familiar. In a season filled with eyelets, white button-downs, and plays on the pantsuit, she managed to infuse her versions with just enough quirk to make them feel original. A slit running up the side of a pastel blazer may seem like a small touch, but when worn, it can make all the difference. Details like foiled silver circles on a breezy skirt or pink fabric adorned with fluttering spikes meant to resemble eyelashes were appealing.There were layers to unpack within Noyes’s offerings. Logoed scarves cascading from the belts of trousers provided a branding moment, skin reveals via asymmetrical shoulders and deep V-necks riffed on understated sexiness, and a section of blush pink separates was an unapologetically pretty new colorway. Combined, the different elements hark back to the collection’s secondary influence, Stanley Kunitz’s beloved poem,The Layers, which ends with the telltale line, “I am not done with my changes.” It seems Noyes isn’t finished with hers either.
7 September 2018
A slew of firsts for designer Audra Danielle Noyes: This season marks the first Resort collection for her now-five-year-old label, which will receive its first dedicatedModa Operandi trunk show. To celebrate these milestones, Noyes decided to revisit her core styles but play with a few new fabrics, such as a denim blended with soft, sustainable Tencel.Noyes pinned a quote from Janet Fitch’s novelWhite Oleanderon the wall of her studio: “She would be half a planet away, floating in a turquoise sea, dancing by moonlight to a flamenco guitar.” The evocative phrase helped her craft a slim selection of easy day-to-night, vacation-friendly items. As always, there were several takes on shirting, among them a new “twisted” style that featured a single sleeve-like fragment at the navel to be wrapped around the waist. A few shirtdresses neatly fit the bill for conservative yet cute daywear, including one in a pretty white and gold fil coupe floral with tiny pouf sleeves.Noyes smartly speaks to a demographic often forgotten by those designers who live in metropolitan bubbles. Her clients range wider in age, from their mid-30s up into their 60s and 70s, and live on both coastsandthe Midwest. Many are working women, searching for office-to-after-hours attire. One imagines Noyes would do quite well in the Bay Area, for instance, and her brand’s expanded showing on Moda Operandi will no doubt put that theory to the test.
28 June 2018
Designer Audra Danielle Noyes’s latest collection functions as a personal reflection of the wider world. “I was inspired by seasons of uncertainty, which I think everyone is feeling,” she explained at a showroom appointment. Some of this disquiet concerned her future plans: As her eponymous brand enters its fifth year, she must consider her next move (the fashion incubator program she began last year in St. Louis will soon end). Then there’s the collective anxiety that will no doubt inform more than one label this season, as designers in general must consider the question: What can a woman do (and, more practically, wear) to face the world today?Noyes’s approach was to shore up. “During that time of uncertainty, to go back to your foundations and what you’re certain of,” she said. It began with weighted lines woven directly into herringbone suits and shin-grazing shirtcoats, meant to represent life’s constants. “That really is tracing your pathway,” Noyes said. The coat’s skinny pointed collar was pulled low to expose a sliver of chest as a sign of vulnerability (not weakness, it’s worth noting). It worked better as a black velvet number that offered a nice alternative evening option for her niche clientele.Fractures appeared throughout. There were sleeveless silk tops sliced along the bottom into strips, and a red and pink candy-cane dress with its cap sleeves and a strip of the hem embellished with small silk buttons, to be loosened as one wished. Suiting continued from last season. “I wanted to empower my woman and go back to my strengths,” she said of her emphasis on tailoring. A crushed velvet suit the color of Champagne stood out in the mix, but the hero fabric was a black and navy burn-out velvet. It had the textural appearance of corduroy, but was feather-light on a fluid skirt embellished with a bit of grosgrain ribbon, striking a nice balance.
6 February 2018
Audra Danielle Noyes is in a period of rebirth. Since relocating her label to St. Louis in March as part of a two-year incubation program, she has been reconsidering her roots as a designer and those of the Audra woman. “I wanted to speak to the emotional response to rebirth,” she says. “Feeling uprooted, the beauty that then can transcend from that.”It began with vertical stripes on washed earth-toned twill, a less literal representation of roots. Eventually, flowers came into play, with red and blue watercolors blooming across a windowpane check dress and small explosions of silver tinsel on a black chiffon shift and matching skirt. There were also floral appliqués, hand-cut from a new Italian lace and placed across white and dark blue tulle, inspired by the delicate rice paper drawings of Brazilian artist Mira Schendel. “I liked the simple nature of those outlines,” Noyes says. She also took a moment to reexamine her professional past at Lanvin and John Galliano—a loosened shoulder, the drape of a bias-cut dress in a silver lamé. “It’s the fusion of American sportswear and couture detailing,” Noyes adds. That fusion is defined by her favorite piece: a simple navy silk dress, ruched meticulously along the sleeves and one side, so that one sees “the hand in it.”
7 September 2017
Simple and streamlined isn’t the first thing you think of when you think of Audra, a brand best known for feminine eveningwear that has wound up on the backs of both Marion Cotillard and Kim Kardashian West. Nevertheless that’s what Audra Danielle Noyes was going for when she worked on the collection.She accomplished the task without losing her identity by keeping the rich textiles—think: fil coupe, velvet, brocade, and holographic lamé—but doing away with things like collars, and keeping the silhouettes tailored. A number of coats and jackets kept theideaof a collar with a trompe l’oeil outline; others came with removable fur collars. “I like when women can play, make it their own,” said Noyes of the adjustable detail. A highlight included a crushed velvet jacket that looked as luxurious as fur, and had piping at the sleeves and hem.Evening is big for Noyes at retail, and the designer made sure to cook up a few hits for her fans, including a gorgeous embroidered lace vest—which could, theoretically, be worn during the day—and a black fil coupe dress. “Evening was about framing the body,” said the designer. A slip dress in holographic lamé certainly did the trick. Styled with a matching open shirtdress however, it read as easy and fresh. Noyes’s best creation however might just be her simplest: A black jersey dress, ingeniously twisted at the waist. “My jersey dresses are probably the most popular, they’re on everybody’s ordering list,” noted the designer.
9 February 2017
Over the summer,Audraenjoyed what might just have been one of its most surprising A-list appearances to date: onKim Kardashian West. Kardashian West’s brand of skin-baring, second-skin dressing and Audra Danielle Noyes’s decidedly more demure aesthetic, honed at the likes ofLanvinandJohn Galliano, aren’t a natural coupling at first glance. But Kardashian West looked, it bears noting, damn good in the high-glitz stretch-silk ombré number she sported for a meet and greet back in June.If Kardashian West telegraphs a certain hyperbolic vision of femininity, then Noyes has, since her label’s inception, focused on a more nuanced view of the female psyche. The tension between fragility and strength in particular is a focus for the designer, writ large in the lush, largely French fabrications (one fil coupe shirtdress springs to mind) and the unfussy, intuitive draping she studied underAlber Elbaz(a ruffled shift, split down the middle in bold black and white was intended as a nod to emotional duality).Femininity in a light-handed, classic sense is the label’s bread and butter, though, palpable even in Spring’s soft tailoring. Elsewhere, an impressionistic, scrawled floral jacquard felt just right, particularly given the importance of sketching to Noyes’s process, a practice many designers in this day and age have abandoned or outsourced to assistants. One of the best looks of the bunch was a body-skimming midi dress in crisscrossing, midnight blue tinsel jacquard—easy to imagine on more conservative shoppers or Kim K.
19 October 2016
Like her former bossAlber Elbaz, Audra Danielle Noyes is chiefly interested in women and their psyches. For Spring, it was a story of growing up and finding freedom in control; this season Noyes turned an eye to more tumultuous evolution, and the ensuing emotional scars. Noyes’s takes on her chosen themes continue to skew toward the literal. Her muse here has quite literally been cut open (crisp, slashed shirting), put back together (a beautiful burnout “puzzle” jacquard), and has found herself all the stronger for it (see: almost armor-like metallic lamé). It’s hard to say whether those step-by-step references stem naturally from the designer’s process, or whether they’re peppered through the collection consciously.Noyes is an American, with a deep-seated love of our nation’s sportswear maestros (Beene, Blass, et al), who cut her teeth in a handful of Parisian houses straight out of SCAD. And so her designs neatly marry the best of both those worlds, the spareness of her shapes elevated by the luxury of textiles from some of Europe’s finest mills and her top-notch draping skills. (A more masterful teacher than Elbaz there could hardly be in that department.) Consider fabrications like a gorgeously textured slub wool metallic, or a lean coat in a painterly dégradé wool. Another topper, with a collar pieced together from plaid and pinstripes, was among the rawest-looking—and best—pieces of the bunch.Still, Noyes’s evident love of her medium means that at times the collection felt a little unfocused, for all the technical precision and textile excellence on display. A dahlia-printed faille, however zesty, seemed at odds with the more reserved strength of other propositions, and one architectural sleeve detail on a cocktail dress felt a tad fussy. Noyes really worked some magic, though, with one floor-grazing caftan dress, expertly draped and whipped up in spangly metallic and solid black. Some starlet would be wise to snap up that one for her next red carpet cameo.
15 March 2016
Audra Danielle Noyes is a young designer, having made her way nearly straight from her studies at Savannah College of Art and Design to Paris, where she cut her teeth atLanvinandJohn Galliano. And so her Spring précis was one no doubt informed by her own experiences, which delved deeply into the metamorphosis of a young woman. That idea came to life specifically in the notion of searching for freedom within control. An airy striped cotton silk jacquard, she explained at a preview, nodded to the strings of a marionette; a peplumed top with a cutout toyed with the idea of vulnerability. At times that reference felt slightly labored; you didn’t need multilayered conceits to appreciate Noyes’s winning marriage of American sportswear and demi-couture sensibilities. To wit: a delicate trench in nude and blush with a full skirt, or a grouping made up of panels of various shapes, shades, and opacity. The latter were some of the collection’s loveliest pieces.With their generous volumes and polished brand of eccentricity, Noyes’s clothes are sure to find fans among women who aren’t afraid of a flounce or a bold sleeve. But that sensibility also gave way to plenty of versatile styles to round out the collection. The designer has a real talent for feminine riffs on suiting. Look no further than her windowpane cropped flares and slouchy blazer for evidence of that. Shirting likewise was an emphasis; tailored poplin pieces served as a counterpart to Noyes’s balloon-sleeved shifts and sculptural skirts. There was a certain innocence here—some of it intentional and some, you imagined, a by-product of the newness of the line that made you keen to see what’s next for Audra.
14 October 2015
For her Fall video, Audra Danielle Noyes imagined New York writer Chelsea Hodson in the solo starring role. Hodson, for her part, composed a thoughtful free-verse poem, which she reads as the audio component. The collaboration is noteworthy because, for Noyes, this collection resulted from the desire to convey a young woman's self-discovery as a shared experience.Often the clothes spoke for themselves without all the inner-dialogue narratives. Noyes' shapes are vertical—whether a floor-length bustier dress or a generously scaled white shirt. In a way, this is more ambitious than body contouring, since there is no form to follow. Her "King dress," a simple sheath in jersey-lined wool with a gilet overlay, looked universally wearable; less so, widened trousers in dusty rose held up by straps tucked like a curtain valance. The Paris-based American designer possesses expert knowledge on fabric details and goes to great effort to source and develop custom blends (swirling silk-cotton jacquard; velvet treated to mimic pony hair; organza containing 50 percent metal fiber) that would appeal to anyone with a discerning eye and sense of touch. You can pick up on Noyes' past experience at Lanvin from her fondness for asymmetric ruffles; here, though, they seemed to project dimension rather than femininity.Noyes has smartly extended her collection with an edited range of French jersey pieces alongside what she calls her fantasy looks. Altogether, you get a sense of breadth of skill—but also how she is at her best when she isn't overthinking.
18 March 2015