New York Fashion Week had come and gone and Adam Lippes was set up at Spring Studios, shooting his fall 2025 lookbook with a crew of dozens. The American designer has always had a take it or leave it approach to the runway, and this season, he was coming off of dressing first lady Melania Trump at her husband’s January swearing in, an event that brought more media exposure than any fashion show could bring him. In fact, he reported that he’s had the “three best weeks of [his] career,” in the wake of the inauguration. He was speaking about sales numbers.
For his new collection, Lippes took design cues from a trip to Italy, which featured an inspirational visit to the architect and interior designer Jacques Garcia’s Villa Elena in Sicily and an exhibition of the expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler in Florence. “There’s no flowers,” he said with a laugh, alluding to the famous line about florals from The Devil Wears Prada. For Lippes, a passionate gardener, their absence is fairly groundbreaking. In their place, the season’s main motif is a textural cotton and silk leopard spot jacquard with a substantial hand-feel used for a coat and jacket.
As ever, Lippes was focused on ultra-fine materials. A velvety wide-wale cashmere corduroy (yes, cashmere!) in ivory for an oversized trench, and an actual silk panné velvet that glows like moonlight for a bias-cut evening dress. “There’s almost no silk velvet anymore. It’s all viscose now, because silk velvet is very fragile, but the hand and the weight are so different.” The Super 180s wool he used for a pantsuit might as well have been cashmere, that’s how fine it felt. Most unexpected was a sporty waterproof ripstop fabric in silk that apparently took over a year to develop. He used it for a full-length poncho and a zip-front track jacket and pants.
The new pattern-making techniques he used for pre-fall have evolved with this season’s more formal offering. There’s more asymmetry here than usual for Lippes—note the subtle A (for Adam) shape of the hand-cast button on the double-breasted jacket—and the graceful diagonal hem of midi skirts. Another interesting development and one in keeping with the new skinnier pant silhouette we started seeing on the New York runways: stirrup pants.
