Simon Miller showed its fall 2018 men’s and women’s collections together in the brand’s new home base of Los Angeles on Friday night, via an experiential dinner hosted by cocreative directors Chelsea Hansford and Daniel Corrigan at Hansford’s midcentury modern home in Laurel Canyon.
Their 18 dinner guests, friends who served as the models for each look, were part of the city’s creative community of musicians, artists and producers. The collection, titled “POP,” drew inspiration from midcentury Art Deco, featuring bold, primary-colored suits, knits and outerwear with pops of silver for women, and luxe nubuck leather, washed woolskin and heavy shearling-lined jackets for men.
Both collections also featured plenty of textured and layered knitwear, such as sleeveless turtleneck sweaters in long-haired, felted cashmere for women and color-blocked, felted cashmere cardigans for men. Hansford said she was also inspired by “French girl singers in the Sixties,” apparent in the styling of images that were displayed in vignettes and projections in various rooms of her home.
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Key prints included shrunken and enlarged black-and-white houndstooth and a graphic French poster-inspired print, which appeared on silk puffer jackets and wool gauze shirting for women, while geometric plaids layered over color-blocked knitwear for men.
Denim, which continues to evolve while remaining the collection’s core, was fashioned into heavy shirting with Western details in classic black and blue washes with geometric stitching for men. For women, there were purple and red denim suits along with two-tone denim blazers and skirts.
Also on display were updated, hand-painted versions of the Lunch Bag and Bonsai Bag, along with new circular and rectangular clip-on leather pouches, and more jewelry in collaboration with artist Leonard Urso, Hansford’s former neighbor. Shoes, said Hansford, will come in due time.
No detail of the Charlotte Perriand-inspired dinner was overlooked, from the custom ceramics by Cassie Griffin and matching flowers by Sophia Moreno-Bunge, to the personalized postage stamps adorning each place card and the musical stylings of Charles Derenne from the band 1982 Paris.
“You could never do a family dinner in New York. I was just over it,” said Hansford of her decision to switch coasts after 15 years. “Here the creative community is so open.” As she told her guests once dinner was served, “It feels really great to have an L.A. family and to have such a cool, good-looking great group of people to surround myself with. Forget models. You made our vision come to life.”