Talia Byre was feeling confident this season—and so too was her “woman”. When the designer speaks of this person, someone she refers to a great deal, she isn’t imaginary. She exists and she needs clothes to wear. And Byre knows what this woman wants to wear before she even knows what she wants to wear.
Thus far she has stayed true to Byre’s signatures: rugby tops with bias stripes, paneled trumpet skirts, crunchy bomber jackets, fitted jersey cardigans and a playful minidress called the Bambino. For spring, these trademarks took on new guises. The rugbys came in a purple striped pattern, with ruffled hemlines, and a high-shine “disco” jersey—which someone could wear with matching briefs, if they dare!—inspired by glossy, gummy Pipilotti Rist sculptures Byre saw in New York earlier this year. The jackets, which tapped into the ’80s references she looked at this season and her animalistic muse (crows) were exaggerated at the shoulders with gathered, popped collars; cardigans arrived with Dennis the Menace stripes and a soft, hand-painted deer print by Harriet Cox. “Preppy but glam,” is how Byre described it.
“This is like a cat burglar,” she said, pointing at menacing striped capri pants, complete with a matching drawstring bag on a chain. The Dennis the Menace reference was intentional. In fact, several cartoons—Scooby-Doo, The Flintstones—informed elements throughout the collection. Did Byre watch them during the design process or hark back to her fragmented memories of watching them as a child? The latter, it figures. Nostalgia was an overarching theme, but not wholly in a literal way: “They remind me of the girls I went to school with,” she said of the individual looks.
There’s a new contender in the foundational Talia Byre arsenal: the wrap dress, whose multi-wear silhouette was achieved after draping. Byre wore on as coffee-holding guests gathered to hear of her proposition for spring. There were also new materials, including a two-tone shearling, seen as a waistcoat and a miniskirt that had a top part like tights so it fits under, say, a cashmere jumper (it comes as “full fuzz” miniskirt sans hosiery upper, too), and suede, from which her belts and barrel bags were made this season.
The mix-and-match capabilities of Byre’s pieces are very well suited to everyday wear, but she wanted to sprinkle in a dash of drama. Artistic illustrations danced across tights, while lace cuttings left over from working on her first bespoke bridal look—designed and fitted alongside her mainline—became veils on beanies designed by collaborator James Pink, whom she met while studying.
“We just had a good time making it,” she said of the energy of the team. “This is quite a real collection—me and the girls in the studio can wear it.” The day after her London appointments she goes to New York to show her collections stateside. Talia Byre is meeting more Talia Byre women at every turn.
