First things first: Nellie Partow’s clothes need to be seen—and felt—in person to be truly appreciated. This was even more evident this season, when she decided to strip down her offering to the essentials. “Coming up on the collection, I was visiting all of the Italian mills that we work with, and I was really craving a wardrobe that embodies this element of just wanting to live in it,” she recalled at a recent appointment at her Manhattan studio. “The best jacket, the best cashmere sweater, the best silk blouse. I wanted it to be very focused—on the gauge and the hand-feel of the knits, the exact weight of the silk, the best denim.”
As such, the first look is deceptively simple: a blue shirt worn underneath a gray marled sweater, a pair of light wash blue jeans, and a double breasted khaki coat. Except when you take a closer look, the coat had a textured weave with blueish-gray threads that give it an exceptional depth (on a sleek single-breasted blazer the contrasting lapels are done using the reverse of the fabric), and the jeans are made from very soft natural washed Japanese denim. Slouchy white T-shirts are made from the softest, lightest cashmere; ditto the tissue-weight merino wool sweaters about which Partow was quick to point out: Their “beauty is that they don’t pill.”
Even the simple button-downs revealed new secrets about themselves, indiscernible even from afar. An off-white shirt in a luxurious heavier weight silk with the tiniest bit of structure that had gorgeous subtle volume, while another in a deep bright red had a slinkier feel. A simple white “T-shirt” dress was made from a wool gauze and featured delicate “lingerie-style” stitching around the seams. It was a masterclass in designing for the real world, where there were no superfluous details, yet the clothes retained an undeniable richness.
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