Oh, to recapture that summer feeling of being young, free and with nothing more pressing than taking your easel outside to capture the sights.
Songzio creative director Jay Song loves to paint and starts each season by creating works that embody his inspiration — generally, oil paintings befitting the brand’s dramatic tailoring and volumes.
But on this suddenly sunny Friday afternoon that followed days of rainy gloom in Paris, out trotted tomboyish silhouettes that were inspired by his experimentation with a new medium.
“I wanted to do something more boyish, youthful so I started with some watercolors,” Song told WWD backstage. “It was really about this youthful boy in summer.”
Working with this new medium yielded the array of pale pinks and blues that softened the brand’s habitual blacks and greys. Song could not resist throwing in a handful of brightly colored prints based on oil paintings.
There were high-collar windbreakers, oversized blazers and workman’s jackets, blousons with asymmetrical necklines, paired with wide cropped trousers or tailored shorts in combinations that also telegraphed the East-meets-West mashup of sartorial Song likes to play with.
Cut from lightweight options like silk, organza or mesh, those volumes felt breezy and generous rather than sculptural, helped along by sly cuts along the legs or arms that gave them additional movement.
The cusp-of-adulthood ambiguity was further driven home by the addition of women’s silhouettes, marking the debut of the Songzio women’s line. For the foreseeable future, Song intends to show both lines in January and June, during the men’s show season.
At first glance, options like flowing skirts, boatneck tops and a tweed minidress with a sweetheart necklace felt easy, but intricately pleated shorts showed that Song has an eye for the commercial as well as the creative.
For a brand that’s gearing up for the fall opening of its Paris flagship, that’s not a bad thing.