Scene setting: Designer Tory Burch led her models down the garden path for S/S 2018, with an open air show held in the verdant exterior of the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. They traversed the grassy floored and impeccably pruned landscape on the Upper East Side, some even armed with rolled-up picnic blankets, as if ready to recline on the grass with a bottle of Burch-branded bubbly.
Team work: Last September, Ashley Hicks, the son of renowned British interior designer David Hicks edited his father’s eclectic scrapbooks into a selection of limited edition volumes. The scrapbooks contain vast arrays of Hicks’ fabric and carpet swatches, and nod to his 1971 publication On Decoration with Fabrics. For her S/S 2018 collection, Burch took inspiration from Hicks’ colourful and mix-and-match aesthetic, gaining access to the designer’s library from his son. Mosaic tile patterns, floral prints, stripes and retro graphics appeared on breezy silk shirts and dresses, kaftans, ponchos and vest tops. These were overlaid with simpler camel sweaters and peacoats. Burch also worked with M/M Paris on a notebook which accompanied the show invitation, filled with excerpts from Hicks’ scrapbooks.
Finishing touches: Green-fingered, Hicks was working on the book My Kind of Garden before he died in 1998. His fancy for floriculture was echoed in the accessories in Burch’s collection. Lengths of leather were hung as necklaces, and tied with metal pendants, crafted into the shapes of graphic floral forms.