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Lacy in Wonderland
48 things you should know and ask about Lacy Barry
48 Things You Should Know About Lacy Barry, the Founder and Designer
of Ephoe, a Couture Label and Tailoring Studio Recently of London
and Now Based in Los Angeles, as of a Week Ago
PART ONE, items 1 (not your average) through 31 (love)
1. Lacy Barry is not your average ambitious corporate-leaning clothing designer. There's a lot going on in her head. That much is clear from the Louis XV-ian brocade confection on the dressmaker's dummy in her MOLI Roller video — it cloaks the better part of a very '50s-looking white summer dress. There are crinolines peering out of the poufy trenchcoat she swirls around in. When she sits down to point out drawings in a book on Edwardian costume, her legs, coated in black tights, poke out of her silk dress in a girlish way that makes her look dwarfed on the overstuffed couch, like Alice in her own Wonderland.
2. But it wasn't clear to me, immediately, what exactly she was doing these days: a collection? A new line?
3. There are seasonal collections on her website, Ephoe, but they stop about three seasons ago — which to a designer chasing the commercial rabbit around the dog track is practically a lifetime. She did have some memorable pieces, such as the acid-green, orange-you-glad, or super-white mod geometrics of Spring 06, paired with ab-fab cropped jackets cut with a virtuoso sense of craft: serene shawl collar, ¾-sleeve finished with a tailored hint of cuff, and an asymmetrical line of buttons that starts smack dab in top center but angles mod-ly down the trunk toward the left hipbone.
In Fall/Winter 05/06 I found one very enigmatic, fascinating, almost but not quite basic ensemble: a sleek navy turtleneck paired with a tulle skirt in a haunting, slightly faded-looking shade of dusty burgundy, finished at the waist with a taffeta band. In the photograph, displayed on a dress form, the outfit takes on a life of its own, as if — don't blink or you'll miss it — there really is a body there and not a dress form. Here were basics reinvented: a subtle thumbing of the nose, perhaps, at the Insta-Classics of Ralph Lauren, or the shoddy excuses for gathered waistlines on H&M racks. Only deft fingers could have pinched the tulle quite so authoritatively— but delicately—under that band, each pleat just slightly different from the other, but always adhering to the same contour, the same shopgirl curve.
And then there was that trench: a trench only in name. One might as well call it a ball gown or a costume from Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge. As reconceived by Lacy Barry, a trench is an iconic, feminine, Westwoodian-esque take on the garment that has little to do with Humphrey Bogart brooding in the rain and everything to do with a woman with long, reddish-brown hair swirling through the park like the star of a wonderful movie with a tremendously happy ending.
of Ephoe, a Couture Label and Tailoring Studio Recently of London
and Now Based in Los Angeles, as of a Week Ago
PART ONE, items 1 (not your average) through 31 (love)
1. Lacy Barry is not your average ambitious corporate-leaning clothing designer. There's a lot going on in her head. That much is clear from the Louis XV-ian brocade confection on the dressmaker's dummy in her MOLI Roller video — it cloaks the better part of a very '50s-looking white summer dress. There are crinolines peering out of the poufy trenchcoat she swirls around in. When she sits down to point out drawings in a book on Edwardian costume, her legs, coated in black tights, poke out of her silk dress in a girlish way that makes her look dwarfed on the overstuffed couch, like Alice in her own Wonderland.
2. But it wasn't clear to me, immediately, what exactly she was doing these days: a collection? A new line?
3. There are seasonal collections on her website, Ephoe, but they stop about three seasons ago — which to a designer chasing the commercial rabbit around the dog track is practically a lifetime. She did have some memorable pieces, such as the acid-green, orange-you-glad, or super-white mod geometrics of Spring 06, paired with ab-fab cropped jackets cut with a virtuoso sense of craft: serene shawl collar, ¾-sleeve finished with a tailored hint of cuff, and an asymmetrical line of buttons that starts smack dab in top center but angles mod-ly down the trunk toward the left hipbone.
In Fall/Winter 05/06 I found one very enigmatic, fascinating, almost but not quite basic ensemble: a sleek navy turtleneck paired with a tulle skirt in a haunting, slightly faded-looking shade of dusty burgundy, finished at the waist with a taffeta band. In the photograph, displayed on a dress form, the outfit takes on a life of its own, as if — don't blink or you'll miss it — there really is a body there and not a dress form. Here were basics reinvented: a subtle thumbing of the nose, perhaps, at the Insta-Classics of Ralph Lauren, or the shoddy excuses for gathered waistlines on H&M racks. Only deft fingers could have pinched the tulle quite so authoritatively— but delicately—under that band, each pleat just slightly different from the other, but always adhering to the same contour, the same shopgirl curve.
And then there was that trench: a trench only in name. One might as well call it a ball gown or a costume from Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge. As reconceived by Lacy Barry, a trench is an iconic, feminine, Westwoodian-esque take on the garment that has little to do with Humphrey Bogart brooding in the rain and everything to do with a woman with long, reddish-brown hair swirling through the park like the star of a wonderful movie with a tremendously happy ending.
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16:06 EDT, 28.Aug.07
14:49 EDT, 28.Aug.07