Designers Beckett Fogg and Piotrek Panszczyk are taking their brand of high-octane downtown glamour from the club into the boardroom. With a predilection for high-shine and rhinestone embellishments, they’ve established a distinct aesthetic of Seventies-glossed flamboyance that thus far has been geared toward night. The eccentric, vibrant collection they showed for spring, with all its nuanced takes on daywear, aimed to give women something to wear 24/7.
It all began with an exhibit of Russian artists at Paris’ Centre Pompidou and the designers’ urge to extract vibrancy out of dark places. It inspired the collection’s primary color wheel and subsequent abstract prints. They knew what their girl wants for a night out; now what does she need for a day at work? Their wheelhouse leans on quirky optimism, so you won’t see shirting or traditional suiting here.
“We really started designing into desire, basically,” Panszczyk said after the show. “It felt really confident, to grab colors and prints. We were looking for metaphors.” They embellished a strawberry print onto a flirty slipdress with their signature ruching and cropped top with connotations of sex and naïveté; superimposed colorful abstract prints onto tie-front rompers and shirtdresses, and used nautical and flight-attendant references for tailoring and casual tracksuits. They broadened their fabric library to include leather, coated linen that had the appearance of leather and cotton. But they didn’t abandon their love of lame, working it into a tailored power suit. They topped it off with crystal fringe on pumps and a sunglass collaboration with Ill.i. That’s all to say, their first attempt at daywear was quite the feat. High-end or high-street, confident design makes Area a brand to watch.