“We want to give a sharp and curated vision, not just in the end result but in the development as well,” one part of Nina Ricci‘s creative duo, Lisi Herrebrugh, told Vogue. “From the beginning, we now work from a limited amount of sketches. It puts a certain pressure on the garments, but in the end, they get a lot of attention too.” Her words could have captioned the post-lockdown “wardrobe reset” many are now talking about in the fashion landscape. “It’s about not having endless amounts of choices, but instead being really focused,” said Rushemy Botter, driving home the idea.Tasked with preserving Nina Ricci’s haute couture legacy for the present and future, the designers understand that a certain adaptability is necessary to create a relevant product. They want to “ground couture memories in everyday ways,” as Herrebrugh said. Their collection conveyed – through construction and illusion – couture shapes in garments devoid of the trussed-up constriction those structures would traditionally entail. “An outspoken shape that keeps its functionality,” Herrebrugh said, demonstrating the easiness of a lime green suit jacket that casually zipped into a couture volume. In another take on the same effect, an easy sheathlike dress was emblazoned with a print of a jacket collaged from archive pictures, creating a kind of trompe l’oeil. If you stripped away the furry shoes and Insta-perfect bucket hats that fancified their expression, it was a pretty realistic proposal for a post-confinement look.

Collage by Edward Kanarecki.