An Elegant Woman Designs. For Us.

By Karen and Erica

We are not insiders when it comes to fashion houses and their designers. We love style but seldom follow breaking ideas—except we are sure we would never have succeeded in our careers had Diane von Furstenberg not invented her wrap dress. 

So—we didn’t know British designer Phoebe Philo was a principal designer at Celine, creating elegant ensembles for women with taste, until she disappeared from the fashion scene in 2017. We learned all of that because of the stories now appearing to cheer her reappearance, with her own line, and a focus on older women.

The Washington Post put it this way:

Most fashion is about appealing to the young, or making you feel like these clothes might make you feel young. Perhaps Philo’s finest idea is that her clothes, as her brand fact sheet states, are made in small quantities as a statement of sustainability—make just a few products, and make them really, really good, and they’ll last forever. If they’re beautiful and interesting, you don’t worry about whether they’re trendy. The sort of realization you come to with age.

Vanessa Friedman, the New York Times fashion writer, said this:

The introductory collection, officially called A1, offers the kind of adult clothes that suggest a woman gets to decide for herself how she is seen. … The owner of these clothes takes no guff from anyone. Wearing them would make you feel briskly prepared to go out and get stuff done, while allowing a degree of secret deviance.

We like having any realization that comes with age, and we think secret deviance is a delightful idea. Especially for women of our age.

Ms. Philo has no showroom, only an online catalogue. Have a look—her image of the people she is dressing is interesting. We don’t exactly see ourselves in this mix—but we don’t not see ourselves, either. One thing is for sure—these are. not designs for teenagers. The words use by Lauren Indvik, the Financial Times reviewer, are cool, polished and hard-working. The fabrics and finishes are beautiful, better in person than they appear online, and the cuts are incredibly precise. Style for women with perspective.

We doubt we will ever buy any of the clothes offered on this website (until they make it to a consignment store). They surely speak to us—elegant as can be—but they are extremely expensive—we can’t afford them. We think there are many good reasons to buy fewer, better clothes—but does that justify stratospheric prices? We can see arguments either way. And should we even be talking about clothes given the state of the world?

So why write about this debut? Because we love the idea of an accomplished woman offering gorgeous clothes to women of a certain age, on a website showing these women looking real. Really great.

If Ms. Philo is as influential as she seems to be, we would hope that her influence will be felt in style we can afford. In any event, we congratulate her on her venture, and her vision.