Last season was Derek Lam’s first as the creative director of Callas Milano. The brand had established itself as a purveyor of refined wardrobe staples—silk twill shirts, smart pants, a classic trench. Lam’s arrival brought a more polished formality to the fall offering. Notable additions included a jacket with New Look proportions through the waist and hips, and trousers with a corseted waistband. Spring sees him returning to Callas’s more laidback sensibilities. He said one of his focuses was on “weekend dressing.”
Don’t mistake that for sweats and tracksuits. He was talking about Europeans’ approach to weekend dressing, not Americans’, but you will notice an easier sensibility to these looks. Be it a camp shirt and trousers in a dark rinse denim, or a blouson jacket and matching full midi-skirt in a technical yarn, everything is paired with flat shoes, to convey a relaxed state of mind. Sometimes the fabric does the talking. He washed a linen cotton vest and pants set, to create a “lived-in” feeling, and he added an elasticized band to the shoulder straps of a seersucker sundress to convey a similar up-for-anything attitude. Though the clothes are finely made, with attention to detail, they don’t come off as too precious.
Details are important. He enlisted Valerie Barkowski, a Marrakech-based, Belgium-born textile designer to create the tassel embroideries you see on the collars of button-downs. As for the set, that’s the Villa Borsani, the modernist, mid-century home of the Italian architect and furniture manufacturer Osvaldo Borsani, which Lam calls the “spiritual home” of Callas. “It has a kind of chic that I really find inspiring.”
