: a project that is not yet finished : a concerted effort to make things better, brighter and more beautiful : our weekly updates on retail to detail and everything in between
Fashion may be aspirational, but it’s ultimately reflective of the times we live in. The way we dress, both as individuals and as a community, inevitably evolves as we ourselves grow. With so much to accomplish, both in-store and the world at large, there is hardly time to rest on one’s laurels. Like all things, it takes concerted effort to move the bar forward.
Have you ever heard of “tailgating” in your best theatre silks? It may sound like an oxymoron, but if you are a regular patron of the Santa Fe Opera, this is not an unusual concept. This famously open-air theatre is equally renowned for its informal runway, wherein attendees from all over the world dress to the nines to enjoy a tipple or two in the parking lot before the show. This is a tradition that is equal parts convivial and celebratory… and ultimately so Santa Fe. Other than the opportunity to really get dressed up (a favorite pastime of ours!) we look forward to opera season for the dramatic inspiration. Heroic feats, torrid love affairs, sumptuous costumes and set-dressing… What’s not to love?
This year, SFO debuts Wagner’s Die Walküre (The Valkyrie), the second opera in the composer’s legendary Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung.) Inspired by Germano-Scandinavian folklore, the tale explores themes of forbidden love, familial treachery and divine intervention. The imagery of Valkyries descending from the heavens is particularly potent. Strength, empathy and vigilance have been personified by feminine presence throughout written history… innate characteristics so otherworldly that legends have deified them to properly convey their power. So, until this opera opens in July, you may find us parading around the stores in Erdem and Biyan, humming Ride of the Valkyries as we tend to the plants.
Erdem’s Summer 2025 collection drew inspiration from The Well of Loneliness—Radclyffe Hall’s seminal queer novel published in 1928 that was banned the same year it debuted.
Erdem Spring/ Summer 2025
At the time, the novel was considered scandalous for its depiction of two women in love. Hall herself loved and lived with a woman, and was known to dress in typical men’s fashions, such as monocles, trousers and suit jackets. Designer Erdem Moralioglu calls upon Hall’s life and writing to explore the creative tension between masculine and feminine motifs. This latest collection seamlessly merges the hallmarks of the two, in a way that feels both modern and timeless. Suit jackets are trimmed with crystal embroidery, silk cocktail dresses hang from the shoulder by ratchet-like straps and traditional shirting is pinned at the neck with dainty collar bars.
This is ultimately a celebration of many people’s living truth: that identity is a fluid, personal experience shaped as much by the exterior world as it is the internal experience. In the words of Radclyffe Hall, “You’re neither unnatural, nor abominable, nor mad; you’re as much a part of what people call nature as anyone else.”
White is often the best choice as the season heats up, given its naturally light and heat reflective properties. While Lauren Manoogian and The Row tend to dominate our light colored offerings, we have found the newest additions to Santa Fe Dry Goods to be well-matched to the task. From Asciari and Ruohan, enjoy a classical, lightweight wardrobe rendered in rice paper, cotton and linen. The look seen here on Sita is finished with a pair of leather and cotton/silk slides from Amblẽme.
While Uma Wang called upon Brâncuși’s sculpture to inform her latest collection, Gilda Midani’s love affair with the artist’s work has endured for decades.
Known for his bold, sometimes tensely graphic shapes, Brâncuși is often referred to as a “pioneer of modernism.” Gilda Midani’s own artistic hand is deeply influenced by his work—particularly his relationship to geometric lines and symbolic allusions. We see Brâncuși most clearly in Gilda’s Star pattern, wherein the Brazilian designer ties and waxes the fabric to resist a full dyeing of the cloth. This method, similar to Shibori, exposes the pure white cotton and linen fibres to create a figurative starburst across the final garment. Similar visual allusions appear across Gilda’s oeuvre, wherein she manipulates color and shape to evoke waves, cliffs and clouds.
This weekend, we head back to New York to see just a few of our newest vendor’s in preparation for Spring/ Summer 2026.
On our trip, we plan to touch base with Etro, Iris Von Arnim and Jason Wu—the latter of whom’s first collection just arrived to our stores for Pre-Fall (and already has us hungry for more!) Two weeks from now, we will hit the road again to London and Milan to see longtime favorites such as Uma Wang and Avant Toi. Both trips precede our full Spring buy, which will happen formally in September… but with almost 200 vendors, we need to take every opportunity to get over to their showrooms and studios when we can.
