Preen Line (Q8947)
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Preen Line is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Preen Line |
Preen Line is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Thea Bregazzi and Justin Thornton built this collection around their perennially compelling baseline of long, fluid dresses disjunctively etched with mismatching panels and pathways of ruffle and drawstring: complicated-looking pieces you could easily wear all day without sparing them a thought. The feminine/masculine tempo was set by a back and forth between floral and check. And their this-season decorative chorus was drawn from the personal style of Janis Joplin and the graphic modernism of Reid Miles, the designer best known for his Blue Note Records cover art.Arranged together, these ingredients made for a fresh-feeling remix of the interesting ease these designers are so adept at expressing in clothing. Mishmash intarsia knit sweater-vests with blown-up argyle diamonds and stripes provided nubbly, tactile texture when styled over the long and asymmetrical-hemmed viscose main events. There was an excellent section of quilted pants, skirts, high-bombers, and smock coats sometimes accessorized with sou’wester or bucket hat that all came irregularly pixelated by a pattern inspired by bohemian souvenir Moroccan tiling. T-shirt dresses in loud mismatched panels of striped cotton reflected that direct and punchy Reid Miles aesthetic. A very cool prettified track top in cotton jersey featured a drawstring at the waist and a ruffle-edged hem. Its matching pant was patched with cleverly inverted pocket details and inserts of shape-defining ribbing. This was a Preen Line collection whose apparently ad hoc improvisation and twist belied the long-honed compositional mastery behind it.
12 December 2018
Thea Bregazzi and Justin Thornton had us at Riot Grrrls. Early-’90s references are commonplace enough to be cliché, but they’re particularly effective on those of us who lived through the decade. Bikini Kill played my college; it was a fairly life-defining moment. In any case, there’s nothing first-degree about the way that the Preen designers approached their references for their contemporary collection. Their aesthetic is much too defined for that. Meaning they can do ’90s grunge or ’70s hippie, but the results always look like Preen. That’s a skill.But back to the Riot Grrrls. The designers were as turned on by the musicians’ penchant for zine-making as they were by their manner of dress. They used the DIY-iness of the zines as a backdrop for their signature floral prints, giving them a cut-up, sketchy quality that lent the ruffled dresses they made from them a bit of an edge. Elsewhere, they did look at the bands’ stage clothes and riffed on the ways they would combine sporty elements with thrift-store slips. Hence the plethora of stripes that they juxtaposed with those florals and frills. The appeal of a Preen dress beyond those surface details is its comfort factor. Clever ruching and gathering gives T-shirt dresses the look of an hourglass, and vice versa ensures that a sexy dress feels like a tee.
6 June 2018
When Preen’s Justin Thornton and Thea Bregazzi first moved to London, it was the early-to-mid-’90s—back before they closed down the clubs and the city was partying hard. For this collection, though, team Preen flashbacked across the Atlantic to a crucible of rave culture that’s rarely acknowledged on the British side of it: New York’s Liquid Sky.You could imagine Chloë Sevigny ethereally working the cash desk in these two-stripe, super-shrunk tracksuits embossed with patches—cassettes, flowers, but no aliens—or the oversize jumpsuits hiked into proportion by drawstrings rushing up each arm and leg. A built-to-swish frilled and pin-tucked dress was lent a subtly psychedelic grunginess by fluorescent ditzy. There was plenty of baseline Preen-ness to revel in: latticed and floral-print dresses whose Victoriana ladyness was subverted by the asymmetry of hem, ruffle, and detail.There were a few very literal flashbacks here, too. A leather corset in blue with a pie-crust ruffle collar was a reissue from one of Preen’s first collections. Also revived from Preen’s back-in-the-day was a slashed-at-the-side deep-V monochrome knit as well as hopelessly flattering quilt-fronted pants. Old-school Preeners should rejoice at their reappearance, and new-schoolers should relish the chance to sample some of this label’s earliest output, still as fresh as it ever was.
3 January 2017
This spiffyPreen Linecollection saw two flavors of source material insinuated within Justin Thornton and Thea Bregazzi’s signature blend of asymmetry, volume, and twist. From the New York Dolls, the designers culled leopard print aplenty and only ironically tough insignia—lightning flashes, a scorpion, skull Pacha cherries—for knits and embroidery. The mash to that mish came from the rodeo via steer-head bolo ties on ruffle-shouldered shirting, long-fringed hems, and interesting riffs on the Western shirt that saw piping promoted to ruffle and shirt extended to skirt in blocks of claret and blue. There were lots and lots of ditzy ruffles on dresses of irregularly assembled panels that emanated an almost grungy disarray and were meticulously designed to do so. One long cotton overcoat with three layered buttons on each cuff bore a frayed ruffle on its left lapel that parted company with the garment at the top of the shoulder to flap free at the back. Lace detailing across the neckline and sleeves of dresses in all floral or mixtures of floral and the house stripe might, you’d think, veer perilously close to the chintzy—not here, though.Thornton and Bregazzi are masterful at offsetting conventional prettiness with flashes of skewiff; theirs is a prettiness that looks strong, not staid or saccharine.
22 December 2016
Thea Bregazzi and Justin Thornton blended a seemingly counterintuitive duet of musical muses—Kate Bush and Jennifer Herrema—to conjure harmony for Preen’s second line this season.The Bush baseline pulsed to Preen’s standard rhythm: poignant romanticism played out in asymmetrically ruffled smock dresses—sometimes with one cold shoulder—speckled with florals and toughened by grid. There were more pansies and forget-me-nots on a great needle-cord overcoat, oversized, with panels in smoking-jacket shades of rusty orange, bottle green, and ripened aubergine.Thick knit sweaters patched together, kinked by gather, rib, and tricksily irregular hemming, were designed as echoes of the Frankenstein cut-and-pastes Preen once fashioned from its under-an-overpass Portobello store way back when. These made fine outfit anchors overFrench Lieutenant’s Womangeorgette expanses of layered tulle and ruffle.To temper the romance but not the intensity, the designers riffed Herrema-esque. A selection of leathers included a three-quarter-length front-zipped skirt and a pompom-sleeved bomber in wide-stitched sections. Standout was a pair of badass pants—think Jessica Jones does the Met—cut in diamond patches at the front and neoprene behind: Looks hard, wears soft.Oversize hoodies, plain or in the collection’s recurring patchwork snakeskin print, came embroidered with Bones Brigade–style patches. On sweaters these skulls were scattered with intarsia florals: a touch of scuzz with a twist of sweetness.
6 January 2016
A Georgian townhouse on Fitzroy Square was the serene setting for the first showing ofPreen Line’s Spring 2016 collection. It was a chance for the designersJustin ThorntonandThea Bregazzito indulge their magpie spirit with a series of vintage-inspired pieces that had their frequent stomping ground, Portobello Market, at heart.Rainbows and flowers in satin stitch embroidery, with more than a hint of the Haight-Ashbury hippie, nodded to the ’70s needlework of Ossie Clark. It crept across the sleeves of a white double pleat denim jacket, and onto a series of seriously desirable two-tone suede pieces that included a belted shirtdress and button-front A-line skirt. Preen-staple floaty dresses were amplified with acidic yellow and pink checks on chiffon and stretch drill fabrics that hit a hard-edged, punky note. Once again, the joy of Preen Line was in its ability to pull elements from countercultures and transform them into the kind of everyday essentials that smart, hardworking woman want and need. There was much for them to choose from in this sprawling 70-piece collection, which overall was an altogether softer proposition than Fall, though the graphic stripes that featured so heavily that season also found their way onto cropped sweatshirts and monochrome tank tops here. A standout was the zigzag sweater, which injected some much-needed West London glam into this quiet corner of Bloomsbury.
21 September 2015