Lafayette 148: Garden Party

Over the summer, Lafayette 148’s Emily Smith invited her design team to her new house in upstate New York to do research for their pre-fall collection.

“I got a house upstate as a great way to create work life balance. Honestly, I thought that decorating a house would be what my other creative outlet was, but it turned out that the garden was really driving a new passion for me,” Smith said.

She continued that her practice of gardening isn’t about perfection, but rather finding the joy in experimentation, which inspired Smith and her team to pull creative ideas out of the hobby and translate them into tactile garments. For instance, flowerbeds were translated into gridded prints on leisure suiting; the texture of tactile Chantilly cross-stitch knits were inspired by tall foxglove and lupin flowers, and raffia baskets were translated into embellishments on a great stretch jersey cropped jacket and minidress.

The new hobby also directly inspired Smith to add brighter colors, as seen through unexpected combinations of poppy orange and hydrangea blue with light to root brown — inspired by her 12 budding flower beds, into the luxury American brand’s latest lineup that leaned into the idea further with touches of masculine meets feminine chambray and denim workwear and gardening gear.

“The challenge to the team was, get out there, bring your pens and papers and, we got some paintings. We actually made a little scarf that has everybody’s illustrations on it. To bring it back to the brand DNA, I wanted to make sure that the prints were unapologetic, bold and graphic, so then they really have that sort of still minimalistic New York,” she said of large-scale watercolor iris prints, hand-painted in the garden, as seen atop a minimalist silk linen frock and abstracted onto a fluid apron shirt and pencil skirt.

“Gardening has become a source of happiness — for me, and now for my team. This collection invites you to share in that joy,” Smith said, offering plenty of feminine, calming and elegant garments to enjoy living in.