A trip to Antwerp, Belgium, that Amy Smilovic and Traci Bui-Amar, her SVP head of design, embarked on inspired the fall 2025 Tibi collection. “We spent a week there designing the collection,” Smilovic mentioned at a studio space in SoHo where she was shooting her look book. “It’s a place that’s completely steeped in heritage, but it’s fully modern at the same time in a way that merges the two. We came across this area with cobblestones, and the bricks were lifted up, and there was a cement sculpture coming out underneath, rather than just a cobblestone with a statue put on top. It is literally the epitome of the Old World and the New World fully merged together.” (They had initially set out to Berlin in search of inspiration. “Berlin was a harder modernity without the richness, to me,” said Smilovic, gesturing rigidity with her hands. But “nothing bad about Berlin!” she said; it just wasn’t the right vibe.)
As of late, Tibi has been a vehicle for Smilovic’s experiments in dressing. She’s keen on convertible garments, unusual silhouettes, odd little shoes—things that can mix into a wardrobe and give it a little oomph. Like any experiment, some parts are more successful than others, but whatever she and Bui-Amar saw in the streets of Antwerp seems to have unlocked the code for utterly cool yet carefree clothes. An Italian wool plaid skirt suit made good use of the ultralow, belted, dropped-waist silhouette introduced in the spring 2025 collection, here repurposed as a belted detail at the hem of a jacket with an oversized, slightly cocoon-ish shape. The skirt was straight—but not narrow—and paired with knee-high boots with a slight, hidden wedge heel and a built-in slouch mimicking how an extra-long pair of trousers falls around the foot.
The silhouette was extra-long: Low-slung, drop-crotch jeans that zipped off at the knee to become shorts created an illusion of forever legs when paired with a sculpted neoprene jacket cut close to the body; a long gray spaghetti-strap dress with an additional wide panel that quickly turned the dress from midi to maxi was layered over matching wide-leg trousers. Another skirt suit in a terrific paper-based fabric with an anorak-style jacket was made for business and a little perverse. There was also a hint of an S&M vibe in the belts with extra loops where one could keep track of one’s gloves (as they styled it) or any number of other items. Coats came with inner straps to be worn backpack-style. Extra-long, superwide pleated pants were a chic take on the JNCOs of the early aughts, while another trouser style had circular godets at the hips that turned them into space-chic jodhpurs or cargo pants. Except for a couple of trompe l’oeil dresses similar to concepts we’ve seen elsewhere recently, there was a sense of newness throughout.
To put it another way, this was a collection full of classics that were classics until they suddenly weren’t, as though they were garments that generated themselves with their own idiosyncrasies and came pre-injected with an attitude that would be made whole with the wearer’s own. The kind of thing that makes people say, “I’ll know it when I see it.” “It’s ageless, and agelessness is so important to us,” said Smilovic, proving that ageless need not mean neutral or boring.
