Last season was Derek Lam’s first as the creative director of Callas Milano. The brand had established itself as a purveyor of refined wardrobe staples—silk twill shirts, smart pants, a classic trench. Lam’s arrival brought a more polished formality to the fall offering.
Notable additions included a jacket with New Look proportions through the waist and hips, and trousers with a corseted waistband. Spring sees him returning to Callas’s more laidback sensibilities. He said one of his focuses was on “weekend dressing.
” Don’t mistake that for sweats and tracksuits. He was talking about Europeans’ approach to weekend dressing, not Americans’, but you will notice an easier sensibility to these looks. Be it a camp shirt and trousers in a dark rinse denim, or a blouson jacket and matching full midi-skirt in a technical yarn, everything is paired with flat shoes, to convey a relaxed state of mind.
Sometimes the fabric does the talking. He washed a linen cotton vest and pants set, to create a “lived-in” feeling, and he added an elasticized band to the shoulder straps of a seersucker sundress to convey a similar up-for-anything attitude. Though the clothes are finely made, with attention to detail, they don’t come off as too precious.
Details are important. He enlisted Valerie Barkowski, a Marrakech-based, Swiss-born textile designer to create the tassel embroideries you see on the collars of button-downs. As for the set, that’s the Villa Borsani, the modernis.