SunOpta (Q9249)
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Canadian food and mineral company
| Language | Label | Description | Also known as |
|---|---|---|---|
| English | SunOpta |
Canadian food and mineral company |
Statements
Erin BeattyandMax Osterweishad good reason for skipping the fashion show this season, and showing their new collection by appointment instead. Surely, theSunoduo figured, it was apropos to introduce a collection inspired by the idea of privacy in, well, private. In aNew York Fashion Weekseason that’s been heavy on spectacle, Beatty and Osterweis’s decision to dial down the buzz machine was a refreshing one.And anyway, these clothes didn’t need to be seen on a runway. Most don’t. In the case of Suno’s latest, the garments were better appreciated up close, where you could palpate the textured silks and delicate jacquards, and make note of the unflashy details, like a blouse’s tie-back closure, or the sprays of delicate crystal and paillette embellishment on a sundress. As Beatty explained at an appointment this morning, the aim was to make clothes that felt personal, as personal as the wood-block prints by Mary Cassatt that originally inspired this collection. Those soft-focus domestic scenes were the jumping-off point for the gorgeous pastel prints here, the best and most distinctive of which was a graphic floral placement print engineered around a relaxed, below-the-knee day dress. The look put you in mind, a bit, of the tea dresses popular in the 1930s and 1940s, vintage versions of which go for a pretty penny these days; that kind of mix of refinement and easefulness is the right one for Suno to strike.After a few seasons of relatively clipped shapes, Beatty and Osterweis opened things up again here. The expansion in volume was accompanied by a few flirtatious touches—sheer materials, atypically abbreviated hemlines, a few more cold shoulders. But even the flashiest looks, like those in a gold-punctuated floral silk jacquard, had a sense of hush to them. These were clothes for living in, not being seen in. Though being seen in them would be perfectly fine.
14 September 2016
It’s easy to forget, these days, but the origins of the “Resort collection” were in travel: Luxury designers’ wealthy clientele made a habit of setting sail for warm climes in the snowy season, and thus, starting in the 20th century, were catered to with mini-collections fit for the annual pilgrimage. The link between what Resort was, then, and what it is now, is tendril thin. ButErin BeattyandMax Osterweisseized it with a firm grasp for theirSunocollection this season. These were clothes for the woman who, like Forster’s Lucy Honeychurch, has her Baedeker out and her passage booked.A “Grand Tour” spirit threaded through the collection in various ways. There were a few very sly winks at Edwardian tourist aesthetics—nothing overt, just a smattering of tan-toned linens, full skirts, and floral prints and jacquards riffing on Western reinterpretations of chinoiserie. Mainly, though, Beatty and Osterweis went after the attitude one associates with intrepid female travelers of the steamship era, conjuring an attitude plucky yet genteel. The collection’s gingham and pinstripe and denim, for instance, had the winning lack of pretense one associates with clothes destined for a day on the hoof, while the coy silhouettes reflected both a bygone sense of modesty and, what with their winks of shoulder and collarbone, a modern boldness. Beatty and Osterweis also connived a few interesting tricks, such as knitting a slit into a ribbed pencil skirt, such that a blouse could be pulled through the back for a bustle-like effect. The collection wasn’t vintage-y, but it knew its history. And in its mix-and-matchability, it was well-suited for wanderlust.
8 June 2016
The latestSunoouting was an unexpectedly decorous affair. High necks, calf-scraping hemlines, plaid upon plaid, William Morris–esque wallpaper florals, touches of lamé—the collection put you vaguely in mind of the Bloomsbury Group, though that wasn’tErin BeattyandMax Osterweis’s theme. Rather, according to the duo, their aim was a twisted take on the traditional. Which, if you think about it, pairs up rather nicely with a Bloomsbury reference, given that Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, E. M. Forster and their ilk were themselves highly gentrified ruckus-raisers. But if Beatty and Osterweis weren’t thinking Bloomsbury, that was no loss—the fact that they touched that nerve by accident meant that this collection stayed away from shopworn vintage tropes. These clothes felt functional and up-to-date.Beatty and Osterweis found a few ways of “twisting” their looks. One key idea was to play with the scale of prints, magnifying their plaids and florals to an almost surreal degree. A more subtle iteration of the same idea was to make their more subdued prints three-dimensional. To wit: the pinstripe laid into wool by a heavy stitch, or the raised texture of a pointillist, blossom-patterned jacquard. The other key idea here was, as Beatty explained, to introduce “explosive” elements to the clothes—oversize ties on coats and bows on high-neck blouses, for instance, or voluminous or elongated sleeves. These gestures helped to give the collection a dramatic kick; still, a sense of daintiness prevailed. Even bold metallic razzle-dazzle couldn’t quite dispel the ladylike tone of pleated dresses in a floral-print gold lamé or red Lurex knit. The relaxed silhouettes translated to an uncorseted take on the ladylike—another aspect of this collection that recalled Bloomsbury, in fact. “Twisted traditional” was one phrase to describe this Suno outing;liberated femininitycould be another.
13 February 2016
The first thingMax OsterweisandErin Beattywanted to talk about backstage at this morning’sSunoshow was the shoes. After umpteen seasons collaborating withNicholas Kirkwood, Suno has launched its own line of Italian-made footwear. Beatty said the goal was to create shoes that looked distinctive, but that were easy to wear: “Not too precious,” she explained, “but also not, you know, too fierce.”Not too precious/not too fierce also served as a good summation of the clothes on Suno’s runway. Inspired by a visit to the recent exhibition “When the Curtain Never Comes Down” at the American Folk Art Museum, the designers riffed on the practice of outsider artists who channeled compulsive mental states into their work. Their focus was on the ways that these artists would use geometry to create a sense of order—hence the collection’s repeating square patterns and numerous looks belted (Beatty used the apt wordrestricted) at the waist. One of the nice ways that Beatty and Osterweis got at their theme was by introducing little grace notes of off-ness, such as the seemingly random placement of gathers on items like the opening dress in gingham. They also made reference to the origin of their inspiration by using folksy techniques and fabrics—that gingham, for instance, but also eyelet, peasant blouse–style ruching, and denim. A calf-length denim skirt, shown with a matching belted minidress, was the best look in the show.
16 September 2015
According to Suno's Erin Beatty and Max Osterweis, their starting point for the label's latest collection was "modern folk." The folk elements were pretty self-evident: naive floral prints and embroideries, cotton eyelet, and craft embellishments such as a macramé trim. The duo came at the modern, meanwhile, from a rather unexpected angle. If the collection were shorn of its folksiness, you'd take it as an elevated riff on prep, what with the emphasis on stripes, pleats, polo collars, and the color navy. This was also an unusually trim and tailored outing for Suno. The key silhouette, perhaps, was a lean pencil dress, buttoned off to the side. That close fit was echoed in the knit frocks and elaborated with some volume in dresses of glossy mikado featuring an empire waist or a skirt that erred toward the A-line. There were also tunic-shaped dresses and tops aplenty here, which relaxed the feel of the collection as a whole, but even these pieces had a kind of sharpness to them. Fluidity was strictly limited and given full expression only in a pair of floral georgette sundresses, layered one over the other in the lookbook. The Suno take on "folk" this season, in other words, was essentially hard-edged urbane rather than pastoral. Beatty and Osterweis freely used the familiar folksy motifs but put them to work in clothes that eluded the usual hippie-dippie clichés. It made for an appealing, if unexpectedly stern, update.
4 June 2015
Madness is one of the great literary themes, and indeed a thread running in various ways through all the arts. Fashion is an outlier: Madness hasn't had much purchase here, perhaps because it's a psychological state difficult to articulate through clothes with any discipline or control. And so Suno duo Erin Beatty and Max Osterweis must be congratulated on their ambition this season, not only for addressing themselves to this interesting theme, but also for attacking it with real rigor, and from unexpected angles.Appropriately enough, the starting point for this collection was Bertha Mason, the "madwoman in the attic" inJane Eyreand in Jean Rhys' sultry Jamaica-set prequel,Wide Sargasso Sea. With those precepts in mind, Beatty and Osterweis moved between tropical floridity and haute bourgeoise formality, a dialogue expressed most vividly in the collection's varied florals, but also communicated via the trade between lean, constricted shapes and those soft and fluid. A few of the looks, such as a black printed silk dress with racy sheer panels, merged both tones in a striking way: The sheer lace seemed to have broken through the dress's decorous facade. Elsewhere, a prim shirtdress with an embroidered floral effusion gave a similar effect.The theme seemed to have pushed Beatty and Osterweis to try out some new silhouettes. This was Suno's most form-fitting collection, but also the one featuring its easiest shapes. On one hand, there was a very ribbed knit turtleneck dress, with a kind of lacquered tricolor stripe; on the other hand, there was a long, loose T-shirt dress in a sheer, iridescent jacquard with naive, Marimekko-ish flowers woven in. Both numbered among the collection's standouts. Less showy pieces were equally strong, too: The low-slung trousers were a case study in fashion sanity. (Beatty advised, after the show, that customers should buy a size up to mimic the runway fit.) Outerwear was a highlight as well, notably the big striped coat woven with fur, and the cozy ski sweaters will be a hit at retail, no doubt. The embroidered microflorals offered a dainty take on the handcraft that's a Suno signature.There was enough here to satisfy a loyal fan of the brand looking for more-of-same or, at any rate, more-of-similar. But the emphasis was on looks that may prove more controversial—as must be the case with any collection premised on expanding the brand vocabulary, as this one plainly was.
This wasn't by any stretch a crazy collection, but it did burst with new ideas.
13 February 2015
Changes are afoot at chez Suno. Behind the scenes, Erin Beatty just gave birth to her first child—and a big congrats to her for that. On the rails in the Suno showroom, meanwhile, the changes could be seen primarily in the colors anchoring the brand's new collection. Atypically, there was a lot of black and gray and navy at work here. But the darkening of the Suno palette didn't result in any dampening of the spirit; rather, it gave the label's signature vivid prints and jacquards a kind of twilit magic. It was nice to see Beatty and partner Max Osterweis testing a new tone.In other ways, the collection represented a continuation of themes, notably the craftwork emphasis that Beatty and Osterweis debuted last season. In some garments, that emphasis was plain, as on the gray dress and top featuring hand-loomed weaving on the front, or the pieces with a kind of necklace of beading and rough fringe. Elsewhere, the craft element was more suggested than felt, as in the dense texture of the multicolored gridded jacquard or the hand-painted effect of certain abstract and floral digital prints. But the most instantly winning looks offered another evolution of the Suno vocabulary: the several soft-structured midi dresses and tops, the best of which were the T-shirt dresses that featured fluttering, asymmetric layers of silk, and the navy peasant top starred with beads, like an exceptionally clear night sky. Simpler items, like the mottled ribbed knits, will get plenty of traction on the sales floor, but it was the ones with a palpable sense of romance that made your heart sing.
6 January 2015
Blame the heat, blame how dang early New York fashion week began, blame the lackluster collections, but the crowd was a little deflated before the start of last night's Suno show. Then out came the first look, a boxy jacquard jacket with neon-bright stripes and hospital scrub-blue cropped pants, and people perked right up. Erin Beatty and Max Osterweis specialize in a kind of offbeat practicality. It's a rarefied niche, but a growing one. Backstage, Beatty reported that the last two years have been positive for the brand. "It's a slow burn, but we'll take it," she said. And it doesn't hurt when Lupita Nyong'o wears your custom-made design to the CFDA Awards.This collection followed the Suno rules—everyday clothes for artsy, intellectual types—but it felt particularly energized. Chalk that up to the designers' great color sense, showcased on the multi-striped jacquard and the knits that followed, and to their confident way with prints. A sleeveless dress with violet flowers above the waist and a print of black and white cubes on its handkerchief hem will be a hit. It looked special without being the least bit precious. Elsewhere, a navy knit tank dress covered in a grid of white dots encapsulated Beatty's message about "never feeling too done, but never looking undone either." Talk about a mood lifter.
5 September 2014
Grounded.That was the word Erin Beatty used to sum up the tone of this season's Suno collection. According to Beatty and partner Max Osterweis, the goal this time out was to create clothing that felt solid and substantial and could operate as a fully functioning wardrobe. There was an emphasis on durable fabrics—denim; a squishy knit; a wool-nylon blend that, shaped into a blush-pink parka, served as the perfect mid-weight, trans-seasonal coat. For all the groundedness, though, there was also a sense of elevation. The excellent denim pieces here were paradigmatic, pairing easygoing shapes with some serious hand-embroidered crystal bling. As Beatty and Osterweis pointed out, they wanted there to be some handwork to all these clothes, something to make them feel personal and special. The denim was the most obvious example of that, alongside a few items in coated terry and in bouclé that also featured eye-catching embroideries. But the strategy was also evidenced more subtly in materials such as the black broderie anglaise with integrated covered stones. This collection boasted a textural richness on par with the richness of pattern and print that's long been a Suno signature. It also found Beatty and Osterweis hewing close to the body—very close, such as in the silhouettes of the fitted knit dresses. And even the oversize pieces didn't feel magnified so much as just slouchy. That was a grounding quality of this lineup as well—the shapes were realistic. The achievement here was that the designers put a little sparkle in the down-to-earth.
4 June 2014
Suno's Fall collection has a backstory too good not to retell. Erin Beatty and Max Osterweis' starting point this season was Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert's photographs of a Roma gypsy camp outside of Bucharest. Taken between 1990 and 2006, the pictures document a time of rapid change in the camp as the gypsies amassed wealth from the sale of scrap metal, trading in their tents for McMansions and their horses for Porsches paid for with cash.The rags to riches collection that appeared on the Suno runway was intended to echo that journey. At the start, fabrics were stiff and coarse, edges were left raw, and glorified shoelaces cinched necklines and seams. Slowly, the light was let in, with gold leaf on the shoulders of a fitted ribbed sweater or tracing the outside of a cardigan's sleeves. "Suno basics," Beatty called them. Multicolored stitched embroideries decorated the hem of a popover top and provided a template for the graphic stripes on a duchesse satin shift (one of the highlights of the show), as well as on fine knit dresses. By the end, Suno's gypsy girl was a techno raver, sporting a glitter jacquard dress with a built-in hoodie. Yes, the canvas-backed wools at the beginning will need to be adjusted before they hit the sales floors, but by and large Beatty and Osterweis managed the neat trick of making the down-to-earth pieces as desirable as the sparkly prizes at the end. Chalk that up to a savvy eye for proportion and the designers' trademark knack for mixing prints.
7 February 2014