Home really is where the heart is when it comes to The Garment’s pre-collections of late. Moving on from the Vilhelm Hammershøi interiors that informed pre-fall, Charlotte Eskildsen, still staying local, took inspiration for resort from Lille Mølle, a 17th-century windmill, home, and former mill, located near Christiania. Not only is it the setting for the lookbook, but some of the jacquards the designer created referenced the upholstery materials used at the historic landmark. “You can really tell that the rooms are there to be lived in, rather than just for display,” said Eskildsen, who transferred that idea into garments intended for “a woman who dresses not for spectacle, but for herself. So, not to show off, but to be who she wants to be when she’s at home.”
Lace and lingerie (including bloomers, which are surprisingly popping up here and there) communicated the idea of intimate interiors. But just as rooms serve different functions, so, too, is there not a singular way of at-home dressing. And so Eskildsen imagines you could wear a pair of pajamas with a soft golden glow while binge-watching TV or being the hostess with the mostest.
At The Garment, femininity and nostalgic elements are always balanced with what the designer refers to as “masculine-coded references.” These usually include ’90s tailoring references. A pair of narrowly cut pants was shown with an asymmetrically closed vest, for instance. This small adjustment created a lovely drape in the fabric. A similar fabric movement is seen in a silk slip dress with one spaghetti strap and one sleeve, which then gently skews the weight of the material, and connects to the idea of intimacy to softness. Eskildsen’s take on the boiled-wool Tyrolean jacket was to give it a cropped shape, crafted from passementerie-trimmed knit, and with frog closures. There was also a set consisting of scallop-hemmed shorts and a lace-edged cape that had something of latter-day Little Red Riding Hood vibes.
