There’s no getting over emergency heart surgery and three touch-and-go weeks in the ICU. Sisi Li has a clean bill of health from her doctors, but the impact of her recent illness reverberates. She’s grateful for life, of course, but she’s also more intentional about the way she’s living it, and that goes for her Nells Nelson collection as much as it does for her daily activities and interactions.

The first thing followers of her label will notice is the colors. Li has long preferred a monochromatic palette, but she’s a lot more liberal in her expression here, mix-and-matching the silk shirtdresses and track pants she puts under them, and throwing together a pine green trench with a chocolate brown top and the palest lilac trousers together with a verve she never knew was in her.

“I get to do what I love again, and I’m not desperately looking for newness for no reason,” Li said. Still, there was newness here in the casual note she struck with a dark woven indigo jacket-and-shorts suit and linen jackets and pants with utilitarian, weekend-ish leanings. Meanwhile, she sees a double collar shirt in cotton twill—“the cashmere version of cotton” is how she described it, and she wasn’t far off—worn with a long pleated skirt with gauze in the vents as just the things for an alternative bride. “You could get married in it, don’t you think?” Yes, barefoot.