It was a benchmark year for Maryam Nassir Zadeh, with a sold-out J.Crew collaboration and a collaboration with ba&sh that together catapulted her particular brand of downtown cool to prominence. However, these “extracirculars” were anything but a distraction in creating her eponymous collection for spring: “I felt clearer about what I wanted to create,” she said during a tour. Zadeh was equally certain about the material she wanted to use: it’s a silk spring at MNZ and a colorful one. The designer described her palette as composed of “ice cream” (or sorbet) shades such as mango, lemon, guava, pistachio and cherry, which she balanced with brown tones, in a sort of equivalent of a milk chocolate ice cream dip. .
More moody tones were used for seriously sexy bikinis, unisex looks in plaid (an unexpected trend this season) and denim. But the real appeal of the collection was the light and bright pieces that were layered and combined in interesting ways in stylist Camille Bidault-Waddington’s lookbook. Daily options include the label’s best-selling dance pants, this season with a long piece of fabric hanging from one hip (a detail also found on a skirt). Shirt options that look femme rather than ‘borrowed from the boys’ are inspired by vintage favorites. A leather bomber jacket in a shade of iridescent pink that you might find in a bottle of decorative ‘pearls’ in the baking aisle was paired with a sheer chiffon wrap skirt with a generous slit. “I still have an affinity with transparency,” noted the designer, who made shrunken blouses, with a slight 1940s vibe in the same material. She used habotai for weightless bra tops that you’ll want to shop for like candy.
A cotton skirt with laces and side ruffles has a substance that Zadeh borrowed from her J.Crew collection. “Sometimes I feel like when we make MNZ garments they are a bit ethereal; they don’t have that much weight in the depths, but I feel like this does,” she said as she held the skirt, which was made for taking to the dance floor. Also nice are the many lightly structured sheaths with decorative strips of fabric under the bust and the flowy chiffons with inserted godets in contrasting colors. One number was ‘tamed’ with a Japanese woven organza insert, while bright sequins were overprinted on cotton in blue and white, a nod to the pottery Zadeh collects. Many of these dresses sit on your body like a layer of powder.
They are “just romantic and easy,” Zadeh said. “I feel like it’s very hard to find good dresses these days, [and] sometimes when you want to dress up, you just want to feel like it’s just chill” – both in terms of aesthetics and price tag. It’s no secret that the prices of branded clothing are skyrocketing, and as that happens, the prospects for value are changing along with it. The collaboration with J.Crew, she said, was “so great to make something that will last, that is [also] cheap. I mean, if you can grab it and hold it and cherish it [a piece of clothing]I feel like that could be a luxury. Perhaps it is not just beauty, but also luxury that is in the eye of the beholder.