Raquel Allegra (Q8987)
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Raquel Allegra is a fashion house from FMD.
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | Raquel Allegra |
Raquel Allegra is a fashion house from FMD. |
Statements
Raquel Allegra is saying YES to the dress… and everything else. “The idea of the collection is that feeling of ‘yes’,” she shared on a recent Zoom. “Your body’s cellular response to the word ‘yes,’ and the power that I believe carries internally and externally as you live your life saying yes to your heart, to your desire, and to your truth.”Her tightly edited spring lineup had her characteristic ease, but in a more pared back way. “We’ve made the collection smaller than ever before; it’s 20 styles and that’s it,” she explained. “When you’ve made a commitment to keep those 20 styles very meaningful, it makes it a little more challenging to take risks. So we’ve taken some risks in some calculated ways, but it is a more quiet collection.” A black linen suit was actually an all-over print that Allegra and her team had designed to make the fabric look “degraded like it had been in the sun.” Further adding to the illusion of something well worn were its raw hems, and stitched details that made it look like it had already been mended. Another trompe l’oeil-like effect was used on a pair of slim trousers gathered at the hem that appeared to be shibori-dyed. “It’s pretty impossible to actually make a garment like that in silk with proper indigo and have it look like that and stay like that over time because of the nature of the indigo,” she explained. Her cashmere sweaters came hand-embroidered with naive hearts and the word ‘yes.’ “You have your heart on your sleeve; the idea is to say yes to your heart.”
18 October 2024
There are things you can always count on finding in a Raquel Allegra collection; chief among them prints painted by the designer’s own hand. So it made sense that the opening look included a cropped cotton poplin button down shirt covered in paint smears and smudges. “Painters always look so cool, they come in their outfits and they’re covered in paint—you know, life’s textures,” said Allegra at a recent appointment in her Tribeca showroom. “There’s this painter I’ve been working with for years, and one time he came in and he let me buy him a new shirt so we traded—I gave him a fresh shirt and he gave me his painted one.” That painted shirt went to another artist who then recreated this version for Allegra. It was paired with a knee-length denim herringbone pattern skirt overwashed in a shade of ochre-ish brown, and it did indeed have that certain je ne sais quoi.But back to Allegra’s own paintings. This season she zeroed in on some rose petals from her garden (at Raquel Allegra the garden always makes an appearance). The petals were blown up and scattered across tonal jacquard fabric with an additional allover rose print (printing on printed jacquard is another one of Allegra’s signatures). On a long sleeve blouse with an asymmetrical, ruffled trim neckline and asymmetrical wrap skirt it had a charming down to earth elegance. Elsewhere, jackets and cargo pants made from washed twill seemed poised for a life of travel, while super cozy knits made from washed alpaca had the same appeal as a baby’s favorite blanket—except groovy and for grownups. “The collection comes out of life, an authentic expression of creativity that comes out of living thoughtfully,” said Allegra.
15 February 2024
“My theme for this season started out as a little bit of a nod to grunge.” Raquel Allegra was discussing her new pre-fall collection over Zoom. The first look, a plaid sleeveless shirt tucked into a matching button-front skirt and worn with a colorblocked plaid shirt tied around the waist, may seem like an obvious nod to the crisp Seattle weather; but she wasn’t just thinking about flannels. (Especially not for a high summer collection.)“We were thinking about a ‘grunge state of mind’ in the way clothing falls apart and you love it even more,” she explained. The plaid, for example, comes from a watercolor Allegra had done, and when you got up close, the textural details of the print had an element of romanticism. The news for pre-fall is that her signature tie-dye prints are nowhere to be found, swapped out for an extremely subtle “sun fade” effect in shades of faded black, faded yellow, faded pink, and faded green. “It looks a bit sporty because they have a ‘repair tape’ down the side seam,” the designer said. “It feels so nice to have a sort of clean and simple version of something we’ve been making for 15 years; but it sits within the collection more like a basic, like a foundation piece.”Contrasting the washed-out shades were photo-realistic bold flower prints made from scanning images from the designer’s own garden, which she printed on poplin for the first time. Allegra also experimented with turning fabric treatments into prints, evident in a simple light gray silk slip dress with crooked green lines running across it that brought to mind a certain kind of topography. “The treatment itself is really intense: you color the fabric, tie off sections of [it], and then completely bleach out most of the color. It would be a pretty intense process for silk; so having it as a print makes having that same ‘look’ much more feasible.”
7 December 2023
Raquel Allegra has been in a nostalgic mood of late, revisiting her archives to get to the essence of her work. “I was thinking about: What is the Raquel Allegra tribe? What are the elements that are defining us?” she said at the Tribeca showroom where she held market appointments. “So it made sense to go into the archive and pull up the core pieces that, if an RA woman runs into another RA woman on the street, she’s going to recognize her.” When she first started her label, Allegra looked to African patterns for inspiration. “I grew up appreciating African art; something that I inherited from my parents,” she said. “My favorite shop to go to after school was the African art store, and it’s just so much a part of what I find inspiring, culturally speaking.” She also cited the work of photographer Malick Sidibé as an inspiration, which was mostly there in the approach to styling the collection.Allegra is known for her bold prints and easy silhouettes: Highlights included jumbo printed check pattern pieces, including a jumpsuit and a slip dress, as well as superlight pieces is wrinkly gauze cotton, some of which were mixed in with other fabrics, then garment dyed, which gave them an interesting tonal palette since each fabric reacts differently to the color. Her signature tie-dyed prints appeared in caftans and other sporty separates, and she leaned into hand-drawn prints, which she brought back from previous collections. A tree bark–esque stripe was used to great effect on a pantsuit that came in both white and a dusty raspberry color. A hand-drawn “chest plate” print, inspired by a vintage Guatemalan shirt she’s “had since forever” was used on simple tees and fleece-lined sweaters and cardigans.
15 September 2023
Raquel Allegra recently turned 50. “I feel like I am where I’m supposed to be at this time in my life,” she said from her studio in California. “I’m not wistful, I don’t think I should be doing something else or being somewhere else. I feel pretty good.” That feeling of being at ease with oneself reflected in her brand’s resort offering, which began with a pared-back look consisting of a simple white tee with a shredded inset in the middle, worn with black jeans tucked inside black riding boots. The shredded T-shirt—a style staple among the hip and the models-off-duty of the early aughts—was how Allegra got her start. “I started making [these tees] for myself when I moved to Los Angeles; I was working the floor at Barney’s and all these cute girls would stop to ask ‘Hey, what are you wearing?’” she recalled. “What’s really cool is that there’s this whole resurgence of deconstruction again, it’s very sweet to see, and I feel like this is a part of me, I did this for 10 years, and there’s this excitement that I speak this language and I get to do this again.”That feeling of looking back to create new things permeated the collection. Mismatched printed “poet dresses and blouses” were made from leftover rolls of fabrics from previous seasons, which were over-dyed in shades of raspberry, dark green, or burnt sienna. Another floral print was also brought back from previous seasons with a new colorway. Allegra’s signature tie-dye pieces felt right at home next to her acid wash denim separates, made from 100% cotton with combed cotton on the inside that has the feel of fleece while retaining the traditional twill look on the outside. Allegra’s take on relaxed suiting included a knee-length jacket and matching wide-leg trousers in black acid wash, worn with a boucle knit cardigan with an exaggerated collar.
16 June 2023
The Raquel Allegra appointment began with poetry. “I start most of my collections by writing a poem,” she explained via Zoom from her studio in California. This season’s poem ended with the following: “We indulge the natural curves of our body/We are landscape paintings/We are memories/We are autumn urns/We are treasures collected along the path/We are the milky way and the garden at midnight.”Although it is possible to think of women—the titular ‘we’—as both the milky way and the garden at midnight, both these things became an inspiration first through Allegra’s team’s experiments with fabric and processes. “Seeing all the different treatments that we’ve been developing, they’re like romance to me,” she said.And so the collection was classic Raquel Allegra, mainly through its use of a wide range of tie-dye techniques on different fabrics. The tie-dye on a quilted rose jacquard jacket made the floral print stand out more, producing a sort of bioluminescent effect where the pattern shone bright white against the colorful background (it was reversible and had a more subdued palette on the inverse). A long sleeve button down shirt—with optional stand-up collar—was worn with a wrap skirt, both in a vertical striped tie-dye in shades of pink, red, purple, and mustard. A knee-length dress with a romantic gathered neckline and long ties was worn with matching loose trousers in an ink blot-ish tie-dye of bold aquamarines, and mint, and golden tones on a butter yellow background. Elsewhere, scanned images of lace were blown-up and printed on easy jersey dresses. Colorful marled knits showcased Allegra’s passion for indulging her creativity through her use of color.A faux-leather cardigan-style jacket with pockets paired with loose trousers had the ease of a set of pajamas; and so did the collarless denim jacket with a slight bomber shape that was worn with a denim skirt, cut on the bias with an exposed raw edge in the middle. “We’ve played around with so many different kinds of denim, and this one feels the most us; I think it’s because the hand is so soft,” said Allegra. “I’m always striving to make the collection as soft-feeling as possible, so that you have that extreme comfort experience when you put any garment on.”
10 February 2023
Raquel Allegra’s pre-fall collection began with “We Float,” a song by the British singer-songwriter PJ Harvey. The lyrics, “We float/take life as it comes,” suddenly made sense to her as she was on her way to work one day. “I’m a multi-note thinker, I’ll take an idea and it starts to birth other ideas,” she said via Zoom from her West Coast studio. “The first seed of inspiration was the song, but I drive along the water every day on my way downtown to work and sometimes there are sailboats in the water; and what I imagine is there’s this relationship between the sails and the wind—you don’t see the wind but it’s there—so it’s this invisible dance partner. And even those sails, they’re sturdy and heavy, but when you see them from a distance they look like they’re as light as a piece of gauze.” She continued, “All of these elements float together in my own creative mind as this way that we are our own little sailboats in this giant ocean, and it’s kind of sweet to think of our clothing as a sail, like our partner in life carrying us through.”The collection included many of Allegra’s tried-and-true fabrics and prints like tie -dyes and overprinted jacquards. This time a miniature paisley pattern emerged from underneath dip dyed dresses and separates in shades of deep marine blue and moss green. “There are magical things that happen when you’re working with a silk blend. The different fibers react to the dye in different ways. It kind of creates a vibration of color,” she explained. A floral fabric reminiscent of botanical images was pretty, especially on a simple dress with short sleeves that featured a weighed-down hem to further give it the illusion of floating. “You know, being out here in Los Angeles, we’re like a little satellite,” she explained. “We are not on the subway, we’re not on buses, we’re not walking, so we don’t get that full immersion into what people are wearing; it’s more ‘what do we wanna wear? What feels good to us?’”
14 December 2022
“Yes, I grew up in Berkeley—I’m a hippie at heart,” Raquel Allegra says, by way of justifying the inspiration for her spring collection. Zooming in from her studio in California, she says, “I don’t know if anyone in the room there has had an experience that has shifted their mind and shifted the way they look at the world through having a relationship with ancient plants.” The world of psychedelics and mycelium is certainly having a moment—it’s been referenced at Stella McCartney and Alexander McQueen in recent seasons—but Allegra’s take was uniquely her own. Specifically, she was thinking about beauty: “What’s the lens through which we perceive what we’re looking at?” For this collection, the lens is “love, color, and comfort.”The color and comfort parts have always been key principles in Allegra’s collections, and most of it felt familiar: dip-dye dresses in shades of pink and yellow like a sunset or blues like the inside of a wave; patchwork sweaters with “overlapping globes of color”; and raw edges. A caftan in Allegra’s signature tie-dye, in shades of yellow and mustard, was a youthful take on the trend, with its kangaroo pocket and contrasting fabric. She also brought back the technique of creating prints on embossed fabrics, as in the shirtdress with swirls of greens and blues and reds like watercolors dissipating in a cup of water; they were overlaid over a jacquard pattern that resembled earth formations and worn like a robe over a matching T-shirt and leggings.The watercolor motif was also present on a splatter-print suit whose print was actually Raquel Allegra’s name blown up into oversized proportions. “I’ve always struggled with the idea of wearing a logo,” she says. “To me, it needed to mean something. A name can mean something, obviously, but also it felt important to say something more than just the name or initials. I scrawled my name in really big writing, and then I dipped my hands in the ink, and I had this really fun afternoon of exploration with ink on the fabric. That was a way that I felt comfortable putting a logo on our garment.” She also created a monogram out of her initials, whose shape resembles a snake eating its own tail (“it represents the continued flow of the life cycle”), that showed up on the sleeve of a striped shirt dip-dyed in black and worn with matching trousers and a tie (also embroidered with her monogram).
They seemed a little out of place in a collection full of breezy, color-drenched dresses and skirts, but it made sense to the designer.“What’s really important to me about the way we put the collection together is that it not just be one thing—you know, we’re dynamic,” she says. “To me [the model in that look is] a rock star. When I go to shows and I see someone on the stage that is expressing themselves, like pure creativity, to me that is also godly.” She adds, “There’s godliness to being in your specific purpose.” And Raquel Allegra would be the first one to tell you she’s found hers.
9 September 2022
When Raquel Allegra began working on her resort collection earlier this year, she wasn’t quite sure what the concept would be. Inspiration struck while she was looking through cards of yarn with one of her suppliers. “All the beautiful colors mixed together reminded me of the way the light appears reflected in Yayoi Kusama’s infinity rooms,” she said over Zoom. And so the reclusive Japanese artist became the starting point for the season. “I truly believe that she was put on this planet as a messenger from another dimension,” Allegra added.For many, the mention of Kusama immediately brings to mind polka dots, but Allegra’s interpretation of the artist’s work was differently—and deftly—deployed. It was most successful on a multicolor splatter-like print hand-painted over a black-on-black houndstooth jacquard used for a sleeveless cowl neck tunic and matching narrow trousers. The resulting dimensional print had both depth and an element of surprise as you turned the fabric this way or that way to catch the full effects of the light hitting it. When that same technique was used to create a watercolor-style floral on white silk jacquard, the results felt less Kusama-y and more in the realm of classic ’90s slip dress patterns. Not a problem, as Allegra also cited “the ’90s” as an inspiration, most evident on the cowl neckline that adorned those slips and “going out” tops. Elsewhere, a sweatshirt overdyed in neon pink with a trompe l’oeil effect that made it appear layered over a wool flannel plaid screamed both Kurt Cobain (the flannel) and Courtney Love (the hyperfemininity of an unapologetic pink). The matching pants seemed at first glance like a wide leg sweatpant, but were in fact pleated trousers that laid smartly at the hips.“Being comfortable in your clothes allows you to access your core intention as a human being,” Allegra said. “It frees you from distractions. The distraction of your feet hurting from high heels, your waist being too tight… I rebel against all those things.” Further driving that point home was the same set, worn underneath a robe jacket with a strong padded shoulder, but instead of being overdyed, it was painted in thick stripes of yellow and blue.
The hand-painting was the thread that brought the collection together; it was there in the aforementioned houndstooth jacquards and the plaid wool flannels, as a tie-dye effect on a series of clingy viscose dresses and separates, and most winningly, on a chunky knit cardigan with a blanket stitch detail on the trim that already felt like the most well-loved thing in your closet whose provenance you no longer recall. The hand-painting is done in the studio, through a painstaking process. “I want to show the human touch wherever and whenever possible,” Allegra said, “to remind you that a human being made your clothes.”
9 June 2022
Over the past two years of the pandemic, Raquel Allegra’s well-established signatures have served her well. She always balances an innate feel for comfort with a kaleidoscopic color palette that manages to be at once earthy and electric, and she’s kept her signature hand-crafted tie-dyes in an array of dazzling patterns. Allegra’s clothes carry the exact balance of ease and Zoom–ready pizzazz we’ve all been craving. With that in mind, it would have been easy for the Los Angeles–based designer to stay the course this season and offer another variation on that theme. Instead, however, she decided to lean into something more art-adjacent. In doing so, she returned to her creative roots while adding a new, post-pandemic sense of refinement.It all began with a book of Georgia O’Keeffe’s writings the designer picked up during a stay at her second home near the picturesque town of Taos, New Mexico. “Georgia was the first artist that I ever kind of became aware of as a little girl through my mom’s eyes, and she’s just been one of those artists for me that’s always been there in the background,” Allegra says. “In a way, I’ve almost taken her for granted a little bit.”While she acknowledges that this is hardly the first time O’Keeffe’s work has inspired a fashion collection, it’s rare to see it done so seamlessly. In place of anything too literal, Allegra looked to the artist’s intoxicating color palette of dusty ochres, twilight blues, and rich, piercing sunflower yellows for inspiration while also paying homage to the various flora that inspired the sensual curves and lines of her forms by way of abstracted, hand-painted prints. For the sun-dappled lookbook—shot at a restored midcentury home in Topanga, California, that (not by accident) belonged to an artist and ceramicist—the pieces took on a cinematic quality, worn by a pair of twins whose striking beauty felt somewhere between Sissy Spacek and Mia Farrow inRosemary’s Baby. Twirling the dramatic sleeves of the feather-light tie-dyed kimonos, or standing in the long ruched silk dresses in midnight blue and a light chartreuse, the overall effect is one of louche and gently faded Californian glamour.
Still, there are plenty of Allegra’s staples for her loyal customers to sink their teeth into—floaty printed dresses, colorful cashmere sweaters, and relaxed pants in jersey featuring striped tie-dyes—as well as a few more of-the-moment touches, such as the ombré mesh tops which offer a more grown-up, artsy take on the Gen Z itemdu jour. This season, Allegra provided all the comfort and practicality you come to her for, with just the right amount of playfulness to nudge it forward.
16 February 2022