These days, bending the gendered conventions of dress is almost taken as a given. Back in 1930s Switzerland, though, that wasn’t quite the case—a fact that stood Annemarie Schwarzenbach, the Swiss writer, journalist, and photographer, starkly apart from the crowd. “She was such a style icon of her time,” said Eudon Choi of the lean, crop-haired androgyne who served as the central figure of inspiration for his combined pre-fall and fall collection. “In Switzerland, she was a key pioneer of this very boyish look, and was even encouraged by her own mother.”
Taking the garçonne’s wardrobe as a point of departure, Choi developed an approachable wardrobe anchored in clean-lined, amply cut tailoring—striped jackets with side seams slashed so they can be worn as capes, hulking moleskine coats with overblown storm flaps, oxford shirting with detachable double collars. Though the fit and palette of a few pieces does lean a little dowdy, the more chaste looks are lifted with flapper-ish shift dresses spangled with paillettes, and suiting figures in all-over archangel flower prints.
Evoking the more feminine components of Schwarzenbach’s fluid style is a suite of looks that pay homage to the heady eclecticism of her approach to dressing. A halterneck gown in the aforementioned floral texture with a thigh-high slash, and an A-line day frock and flared separates cut from a sheer, geometrically patterned lace bring a red-blooded frisson to an otherwise relatively sober offering—a little more of this wouldn’t have gone amiss.
