Fashion is renowned for being a pretty cult-y business—you know, with all its false idols, object worship and long-flowing gowns… Sometimes, when you take a step back and contemplate our collective relationship to it, and the many sacrifices made in service of it, you wonder how the whole thing keeps ticking along, other than being fueled by blind (cynics would say misguided) faith.
Rather than a cult in the sinister sense, though, the pair over at Palmer Harding have been contemplating the industry niche over which they preside as more of a coven—a term that, by default, bears stronger connotations of enlightenment over indoctrination, mutual participation and feminine strength.
Indeed, the coven that Levi Palmer and Matthew Harding have managed to assemble around their namesake brand is pretty strong. “They are the women that we’ve always wanted to dress,” Palmer said, going on to cite Michelle Obama and Queen Rania of Jordan among a litany of A-list names. The objective for this season was to study the iconography that holds the label’s spell.
The natural starting point was plain white shirting in velveteen poplins—the brand’s hallmark—transformed by way of billowing proportions, asymmetrical gathers and architectural pleats at the waist. Silhouettes were generally long and A-line, conjuring an almost Wiccan feel. Texture was brought into the fray by shimmering, crinkled gold silk—in itself worthy of worship—while swathes of sky blue and hard cobalt stripes on creamy gray linens speckled the collection’s generally celestial palette.
The latter hue, Harding explained, was an invocation of the power and potential wrath embedded within any coven member not treated with due respect. “We were looking at nature and this notion that, where the color blue appears, it often signifies danger,” Harding said. “Like with the blue-ringed octopus: this tan-gray creature that, when provoked, exhibits these electric blue rings that say, ‘I’m small, and I may look delicate, but I’m incredibly venomous. Don’t mess with me.’”
As ever with Palmer Harding, the collection’s success relied on improbable sleights of hand—single squares and circles of fabric transformed into baffling architectures, held by a single seam; or, conversely, simple, gestural forms that unfolded into patterns that would boggle the mind of even the most advanced puzzle players. But it might be best to avoid too much detail here. As with any spell, its mystic charge would be broken as soon as its mechanisms are revealed. You’ll have to join the Palmer Harding coven to learn more.