On Sass and Bide in N.Y

Development of fashion and maturity in design direction is certainly an interesting subject. Often you see the same design patterns over and over again, sometimes you get surprised at new, strong influences, and on the rare occasion you can actually spot a sense of ‘maturity’ in the production. The latter one may open many doors to a new audience, but it may also restrict the current, overall image.

Take Sass and Bide for instance, whose designs and image over the past two to years, have taken a slightly new direction. Naturally all designers go through different phases in their design career; whether that may be personal experiences, inspiration, or deliberate influences etc, and usually this is shown in their work. It’s an interesting observation to see how some designs can simply just settle.

Sass and Bide’s choice of show casing in N.Y has undoubtedly had a huge influence on their work. This is by no means a negative comment, quite the opposite. We’ve seen the darling Australian duo do the wild ‘grungy look’ heavily dominated by dangly jewellery, and models with tussled hair. The “don’t look too pretty” look has always been the girls’ trademark. We’ve seen inspiration from pirates’ clothes, wild animals accessories etc.

This week in New York gave us a different flavour from their past designs. Featuring a complete accessory-and-jewellery-free collection, their work showed strong neutrals of black, silver, white, and matte gold. Still with the traditional choker necklines, their work seemed to have taken a more developed, mature direction. No messing about, no added highlights, no silly socks, hair dos or any added extra. Just a simple, pure collection – and sometimes that is all we want.