“It’s always about what we’re feeling and craving next. What will give us friction in our closet to make it modern and alive. It’s always designing from that point of view, and then we step back and I try to put some kind of narrative around it,” Tibi designer Amy Smilovic explained at her downtown headquarters.
Smilovic’s fall narrative largely riffed on ’90s minimalism, with the tiniest smidge of Western attitude (a trenchcoat with attached bandana) from her team’s Texas road trip last year.
“Doing anything that could look like a redo or vintage, it’s really important to make it feel modern,” Smilovic noted, adding that the collection’s irregular shaped accents and cutouts were the result of going down a rabbit hole of biomorphism.
It might sound complex, but her designs were straightforward and digestible — slightly twisted, refined yet relaxed wardrobe staples with a play on proportions in layering. Jeans and trousers came with low-slung waists or ’90s skater-pant influenced wide-legs, oversize shearlings sported large pockets, knits had irregular blob-shaped cutouts, miniskirts included zip-off coin pouches, and bodysuits were cut with asymmetrical high legs.
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“It’s fashion, honey,” Smilovic said when her husband had questioned the line’s purposeful “cracked and chipped” buttons on classic trenchcoats.
“Long and lean but effortless — doing blazers that are not a shirt, not a blazer, and not faced so they have an ease to them feels good. It’s not a shacket,” she said of the season’s lightweight tailored jackets. Ultrasuede, washable pants with hidden snap closures offered equal functionality with front-facing “puddle” effect — no risk of tripping over these slacks while running about town.
The multifaceted Tibi woman, Smilovic included, continually desires a fashionably functional wardrobe — the fall collection offered plenty.