It’s all about luxe effortlessness in the city! For her tenth collection, Spring/Summer 2018, designer Sandy Liang continues to approach her brand’s downtown roots with new, playful interpretations of nostalgic narrative, and elevated experimentation with shirting and all-year transitional outerwear. Liang also introduces color-blocked oversize knit polos, floaty eyelet and lace paired with her hallmark statement leather jackets and neck-cozying shearling. Piece by piece and collection by collection, Liang builds strong through lines in her clothes that reveal a consistent understanding of her girl, as well as the riffs and subversions that make her girl reminisce and smirk.
The SS18 collection plays with tensions in material and embellishment: The Bayside Fleece updates the classic layer-able outerwear with an elegant, luxury jacquard pocket, while dress cuts in the collection reference both strappy garter belts and updated school uniforms. Denim in the collection is embellished with clustered Swarovski crystals, as well as metal loops that originated as nipple jewelry offering a clever nod to punk aesthetics. Work and play combine artfully in the Corbin Belt, which is part garter, part hardware tool belt.
Tailoring is central to the collection: exciting shirting has gaps with girly peeks of skin, a leather apron is closely fitted as a kind of spare outerwear designed with a kangaroo pocket. The Wells Denim Jacket is artfully designed to hang via a long halter from the shoulders, achieving a kind of enviable forever-slouch.
Liang’s subtly wry references are woven through the collection with inventive humor. For Spring, she customized the Lit Print, which features polka dots mixed with tiny rainbow lighters. Gel-filled floral decals grace the bib of lace dresses, a touchable element balanced by the movement of ruffles and black sheer ribbons. Oversize denim is designed with deep pockets marked with a subtle “xx”– referring to the way so many women sign off their e-mails.
Sandy Liang is a New York based-and-bred designer who draws energy and inspiration for her collections from the magnetism of childhood memory and unsung neighborhood spirit, from chefs in aprons smoking behind restaurant doors to grandmothers shuffling on Canal Street in wide-leg printed pants. Liang grew up in Bayside, Queens, and after briefly attending Rhode Island School of Design for architecture, transferred to Parsons to study fashion design. She founded her company immediately upon graduating, and began to develop what she says she could just see and feel from the outset.
As a designer, her roots are firmly in outerwear, the structure, materiality and identity of which has informed her work since her first collection ten seasons ago. With elevated detailing and beautiful fabrics (leather, shearling, mink and more), Liang explores the memories of comfort from winter coats on the school playground, her first impressions of silhouette and color from 90s brands that she saw on the street in New York as a kid, and the wit of cartoon-y, playful influences. Each collection builds on the last, with thoughtfulness and consistency that is uncommon in a young brand. As she develops new offerings in ready-to-wear, building on shirting and knits, her attention to layer-able quality and material remains. Liang innovates within the range of emotionality that inspires her, and is very much a biographical designer.
Liang’s process has a rare, local focus. She works intimately with a small team in a renovated studio space that was once a storage room for her father’s restaurant two blocks away, where he still works. She names pieces after family and friends, and develops custom prints–like a fruit print with hidden lighters–that wink at the everyday in New York. Her designed memories have their own luxury, longevity and wit, are enjoyable to observe, sumptuous to touch yet easy to appreciate.
For more: @sandyliang – www.sandyliang.info
xx
Elena Sendona
