Lee Mathews (Q5004)
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Lee Mathews is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Lee Mathews |
Lee Mathews is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
A review appointment with Lee Mathews can quickly turn into a philosophical debate. The designer has spent much of Australia’s lockdowns questioning everything—not just fashion. Over a Zoom call from her home in the early hours of the morning, Mathews was deep in thought about how to solve the education crisis around the world, how to promote artistry and traditional skills, and how the political and social systems in place post-COVID no longer work as we move into a new era of personal independence.Closer to home, she designed her pre-fall collection with her team in mind. How, she wondered, can she stimulate and inspire her young staffers, who are dejected and mentally worn down by the pandemic? Mathews doesn’t have the answer just yet, but her pre-fall collection is a roundup of unfussy, wearable, and kind-of-sexy pieces that allow a woman’s wardrobe to be uncomplicated. “There is no inspiration. No inspiration press statement,” she said. “That just doesn’t make sense anymore. I want to make good things that women can love and wear for a long time.” A black scoop-neck tunic with button-up sides will do the job, as will a houndstooth robe coat and collaged silk dress in a floral-stripe combo.
15 December 2021
“It’s been the hardest few months,” Lee Mathews said on a Zoom call from her Sydney studio. The usually optimistic designer has a right to be bummed: New South Wales only recently emerged from a five-month lockdown. No one has entered or exited Australia—except, somehow, celebrities and the very wealthy—for almost two years. “It feels a little likeGroundhog Day,” she said. Mathews used the repetitive Aussie days to ask big questions about her brand and fashion in general: “What are you making and why? What makes it worthwhile?”She started her label after her time as aVogueAustralia editor, where she reworked thrift store pieces into new garments. In the 20-plus years Mathews has been at it, she’s developed signatures like roomy cargo pants, voluminous prairie dresses, and mannish overcoats and jackets. She spent 2020 and 2021 honing these designs, producing uncomplicated, lovely, easily wearable pieces. “My instincts, which you rely on heavily in times when you are isolated, are to surround myself with good people, take good advice, and trust in that advice,” she said.During the darkest days of Victoria lockdowns, the team members at her Melbourne store were looking for a way to stay busy, so they started posting archival and one-off pieces to a new Instagram account and selling them directly through the account to customers. Without any promotion her followers grew and within three months they had built a sizable business. Mathews’s Australian stores will finally reopen this Saturday, but she’s steadfast about keeping this archival project going. The potential for someone with such a vibrant fanbase and well-honed point of view seems high. Let’s see what else she has up her sleeve.
26 October 2021
Subtlety is Lee Mathews’s strong suit. Her clothing rarely veers from considered, workwear-inspired separates and the occasional pouf-sleeve dress. This season, however, she pivoted slightly, collaborating with the young Aussie artist Clare Wigney. A recent grad of Sydney’s National Art School, Wigney pulls digital inspirations into the physical world. Her abstract flowers are pixelated, and her palette mixes cyber blue and pure rose pink.Seeing so much color and pattern in Mathews’s collection might come as a surprise to her followers, but there’s a reason for the change: She hopes to use the garments to spotlight Wigney’s emerging talent. Over a Zoom call, Mathews set the scene: Australia feels more isolated than ever, plunging back into intermittent lockdowns and stranded with firmly closed borders. On the day of her look-book shoot, yet another lockdown was announced. The least she could do, she feels, is find a way to emphasize the new generation of Aussie creatives. Even if Mathews is stuck at home for now, her message—and her sunny smock dresses and warm knits—will resonate abroad.
14 July 2021
Lee Mathews blends practicality and whimsy in her work, but for pre-fall, she has walked firmly into the land of fantasy—and the collection is better for it. Inspired by the Bloomsbury Group and the rich, artful interiors and wild gardens of Charleston House, Mathews has incorporated graphic floral prints, oversize crisp white collars, and some of her poofiest sleeves yet. Sure, the cargo trousers and boyish trenches her shoppers might be accustomed to are taking a backseat to a selection of delightful frocks, but as Mathews explained over a video call from her Sydney studio, who doesn’t want a bit of escapism, of fashion fantasy, and of dressing up right now?Imagining her woman on the other side of the world in rural England gave Mathews the freedom to experiment—but it’s having excellent results in her local Oz too. Because of the pandemic, she has cut back on her wholesale accounts globally, refocusing on business in Australia. Mathews’s knits, in a chunky cotton yarn, have become popular and her sunny dresses pop up on sidewalks from Melbourne to Byron Bay. The country’s Blue Mountains might be next. The look book was shot in what the designer claims must be a haunted house in the mountain range. Spookiness aside, the spirits clearly agree with this turn in Mathews’s aesthetic.
13 January 2021
After 20 years in the business, Lee Mathews knows what works. Her workwear-tinged, feminine pieces don’t need to change much from season to season to be successful from a commercial standpoint: Her clientele already appreciate the contrast stitching, the bell-shape skirts, and the D-ring fastenings with cloth ribbon. Tiered ruffles and slender knits are also signatures for the Aussie designer.In a year when everything is being questioned, Mathews rightly decided to stick with her strengths for spring 2021. Her clothing has long toed the line between overtly feminine and diligently practical, and with forgiving silhouettes that don’t skimp on whimsy, her pieces are truly a something-for-everyone proposition. For tomboys there is rugged gingham, and for cottagecore fans there are gigantic pouf-sleeve white cotton frocks. Mothers on the run might be drawn to her abstract floral shirtdresses—best paired with flat sandals. A new tiered mini in ditsy navy and white florets will draw a younger generation into the Lee Mathews fold. The way forward for Mathews is not to change too much and continue to do what she does best.
30 September 2020
Lee Mathews’s clothes do a lot of work for their wearer. They have plenty of pockets, forgiving silhouettes, and are made of heavy drill cotton to accentuate the good and conceal the bad. They are made tough to withstand daily wear and yet also delicately enough to make even the most hardcore woman feel a little bit lovely. Season after season, Mathews sticks true to her formula of workwear-meets-womenswear; it’s what has made her a favorite in her native Australia.For fall 2020, she shot her look book in front of the Moreton Bay fig trees in Sydney’s Centennial Park. At her showroom in Paris’s Marais area, a cool 10,000 miles away, Mathews explained that the ’70s Disney flickPollyannahad helped inspire her plaids and prairie dresses. That film—about a girl who falls from a tree—has a decidedly depressing storyline, but it ties back to what Mathews does well: make clothes that acknowledge the struggles of a woman’s daily life, while still feeling effortless. Wool overshirts, pea-color trenches, and a continuation of pre-fall’s plaid suiting were highlights. Alongside an expanded rose-colored selection of knitwear and minidresses, these pieces skirt the line between essentialwear and fashion well. As she expands her business internationally, it’s this type of dressed-up enough garments that will make the Mathews way of wardrobing appeal to clients in France, Britain, Japan, and beyond.
5 March 2020
Lee Mathews and Natalia Grzybowski are sticking to their strengths. In a showroom in Paris, the design duo joked that what they really love and do best are the three S’s: shirts, shirtdresses, and shirt jackets. They’ve got plenty of options for the Spring season, having gived corporate pinstripe shirts a Western yoke, cut dresses in a wide A-line shape, and made boyish chore coats in over-dyed organic cotton. Because the concept is so tried and true—and salable—the pair don’t have to experiment much; each collection is a fine-tuning of ideas rather than an introduction of dozens of others.Still, Spring 2020 feels a bit more momentous for the pair. Not only does it mark 20 years in business for Mathews, but its lookbook stars Gemma Ward. The model is a real-life customer of the brand, shopping out of its Sydney, Australia stores, and she’s exactly the type of relaxed, smart woman Mathews and Grzybowski are after. Their big proposition this season, aside from those three S’s, is a wide range of bright, big dresses. Tent shapes come in beige florals, orange stripes, and a robin’s egg blue with lightly puffed sleeves. On the hanger, some of these frocks can look a bit over-designed, but on the body, all this thinking and functionality plays out quite well. A bubble dress in beige and navy features all the bells and whistles but looks functional on Ward in the look book. The designers spoke about trying to take day clothes and make them gorgeous; these little details work hard to do just that.
8 October 2019
Lee Mathews has been in business for 20 years, an occasion marked on the runway today with a collection that reverently looked back at the house’s archives. Lucky for Mathews and her co-designer Natalia Grzybowski, those archives are stuffed with brilliant pieces that span pretty frocks, practical tailoring, and easy layering pieces. Mathews describes this season as a push-pull between her predilection for femininity—see a bright pink sheer dress with tiered seaming—and Grzybowski’s love of tailoring and tomboyish elements. Somewhere in the middle are the collection’s quirkiest pieces, like quilted full skirts, dresses with circular insets at this hips to create bulbous shapes, and cargo jackets and vests in workwear twill.Each exit was rich with ideas and items, shirts layered under dresses with vests and coats and platform woven sandals. If that’s a lot to digest, know that in Mathews’s store it will be well merchandised, girlish and boyish pieces living in harmony. On their own, each item is simple and wearable with a teaspoon of flair, the sort of just-posh-enough stuff that has made Mathews a recent favorite of international e-tailers like Net-a-Porter and MatchesFashion.com. On this track, her next 20 years are looking pretty bright too.
16 May 2019
Birdwatching has become the unofficial hobby of lockdowns everywhere, including Sydney, Australia. Thanks to reduced air traffic, the trees outside of Lee Mathews’s studio have become wildly populated with birds. There are no literal avians in her resort 2021 collection though—instead, the creative director followed their path to a sense of freedom, joy, and movement. Mathews’s structured dresses have even fuller skirts and poufier sleeves as a result. Pants have added legroom, too, from a jodhpur-like cargo pant to silky, wide-leg options.The danceability of these clothes was put to the test in a performance choreographed by Eliza Cooper and filmed by Martyn Thompson. Thompson, a photographer based in New York, is a longtime friend of Mathews’s who ended up stranded in Oz during the lockdown. “The experience reconnected me with people I’ve known for a long time,” said Mathews of isolating in Sydney, “and something new is coming from it.”That willingness to collaborate and try something new is the best possible outcome of a world isolated and apart. “Having to collaborate outside your usual sphere to make things that resonate more is what will propel fashion forward,” Mathews said over a Zoom call. Brands much larger than hers should take note.
3 August 2020
Lee Mathews excels at two poles: workwear and diaphanous dresses. To the uninitiated, these would seem like perfect opposites, one pragmatic and purposeful, the other entirely frivolous and fun. What Mathews and her codesigner, Natalia Grzybowski, have done best for pre-fall is build a world where overdyed chore coats and paper-bag pants live in harmony with ruffles the size of the Ritz. They make sense of it all by relying on the dramatic architecture of their shapes.This season the overarching silhouette is straight, with the action at the periphery—neck, shoulder, hem—or the occasional paper-bag waist. As such, the collection works as a series hero pieces but also like a puzzle where a high-neck day dress can be worn underneath a smart trench, or a voluminous tent dress can be grounded with the help of a slim knit base layer. There’s plenty of drama in these pieces—Mathews and Grzybowski like to make a statement with their shapes—but it’s a wearable, useful kind of fashion magic.
10 December 2019
After a multiyear hiatus, Lee Mathews has brought her effortless clothing back to Sydney Fashion Week—and what a welcome return it is. Mathews is one of Australia’s most sophisticated designers, whose collections, year in and out, offer timeless pieces that can build out a woman’s wardrobe. For Resort, Mathews brought an outdoorsy, utilitarian spirit to her collection, sending out ideas as disparate as a khaki overalls dress and a delicate sheer floral number. Flat sandals and sun hats kept it all together, establishing the Lee Mathews woman as someone enjoying all the perks the outdoors has to offer.Among the many highs of the season are Mathews’s numerous bright white pieces, from a strictly tailored shirt to a pouf-sleeved dress that could serve as a wedding gown for a truly modern bride. Girlier clients might reach for those translucent florals or an excellent spiced floral dress, while those with a more graphic sensibility will find lots to love in the gingham section of the show. With swim, suiting, and denim making up the rest of the collection, it’s safe to say that Mathews has re-established herself as one of Sydney fashion’s heaviest hitters.
21 May 2018