There has been an unusual trend in London for models posing with their fingers stuffed into their waistbands. This gesture—as seen on Nuba and Di Petsa’s catwalks, as well as within Stefan Cooke’s lookbook—could for obvious reasons be unpacked in an erotic, if not confrontational, direction. But Natasha Zinko, whose seasonal imagery was full of hands jammed into pants, connected the phenomenon to something a little more innocent: a self-soothing mechanism similar to thumb-sucking in children. “It’s about feeling safe and comfortable in unstable times,” the designer said in a preview of her fall collection. “Like you’re at home and relaxing in your favorite pajamas.” This season duly looked as though it was built on a pile of old reliables plucked from a laundry heap.
Zinko brought a sense of lived-in comfort to even her most evening-of-evening pieces—a fresh development that will give Doja Cat et al something to pull for the red carpet—with big crinoline skirts layered in what looked like a floordrobe of upcycled hoodies and colossal maxi skirts patchworked from who knows how many satin bloomers, some of which featured elsewhere with poppered gussets transforming them into miniskirts with a single rip. Paneled corsets were integrated into flounced polo shirts, fleece dresses were developed on the inside-out to reveal tactile pattern lines, and bow-shaped bustiers had been constructed from the legs of sweatpants. Sensible office trousers were suspended from the thighs of a separate pair of houndstooth trousers—a motif throughout the collection. Sinuous, carnivalesque jeans had been washed so many times that Zinko’s team joked “you probably could run a marathon in them.” Jersey hoodies were ironically the most restrictive pieces in the mix, straitjacketing the wearer’s arms within two extraneous sleeves fused inside kangaroo pockets.
The designer was among several names absent from this season’s catwalks, which she said allowed her a moment to reflect, even despite releasing a pre-fall collection less than a month ago. “I had time to think about the past ten years,” she added. “What I’ve done before and how that can be aligned with what the ‘botched’ aesthetic we’re exploring at the moment.” The brand has undergone an aggressive facelift in the years since the stylist Betsy Johnson began consulting and, though Zinko shows no signs of an identity crisis, seeing the designer return to her own codes felt a little more honest to the brand’s origins. Sequined dresses, lace-trimmed nighties, floral satin bombers and bubble-hemmed minis recalled the more naïve, girlish look Zinko established in the 2010s, while deadstock labels with outdated branding were stitched onto double-layered baby tees in pale pink. More of these lighthearted moments will alleviate the brand from feeling, well, not like Zinko’s at all.
