“I really wanted a sense of ease,” said Hervé Léger’s Michelle Ochs of her new pre-fall, adding that what she’s developed an appetite for of late is lightness. It’s a topsy-turvy, heavy world. Ochs’s instinct is spot-on: Everything else feels like a weight on our shoulders, so why should our clothes?
“It’s more of a feeling than an actual, direct concept,” she explained. “I wanted to infuse more wearability into the collection.” It started with a vintage Léger skirt she came across in the archive. “It had this georgette element to it, and for a brand that is known for bodycon I just love the juxtaposition of that fluidity.”
Léger, the man, cut could a mean slip and drape a fabulous flouncy silk, in addition to the stretch knits he was known for—and which form the foundation of our present-day obsession with athleisure (and SKIMS, and yoga pants, and whatnot). With this in mind, Ochs steered her pre-fall assortment into a space she hasn’t much explored: daywear. She made easy, frilly dresses in the Léger knit, some plain and others with adornments like funky metallic buttons or subtle sheer touches. These will sit at the lower end of the Léger price range, and seem designed to be crowd pleasers rather than forward-looking propositions. Fair enough—they’re easy to imagine being worn by Taylor Swift on a Tribeca stroll and the many women who commute into New York City to work at an office.
Back to the georgette skirt—that’s where Ochs flexed the muscles she developed designing fan-favorite dresses at the now defunct Cushnie et Ochs. Her interpretation of the skirt is the dress in the opening look of this slideshow: a bandage knee-length frock with a georgette skirt applied at the empire waistline that plays into the current fascination with shapewear while offering a dressier, less va va voom interpretation. It looked rather elegant in its simplicity.
