Nellie Partow tried to find a pithy encapsulation of the inspiration for her latest resort collection. “I find that sometimes it’s hard to articulate [something] specific, but I really resonate with women and their real-life moments and experiences,” she said. “In my design process I try to be true to myself, because that’s the only thing I feel that I can genuinely do.
” An instinctual designer, Partow is driven mostly by the materials she finds when she travels to her mills in Italy, always willing to go deep into their archives and search out something unexpected that captures her mood for the moment. This season, it was a 100% natural organic cotton fabric “from the ’60s or ’70s” where the yarns that ran on the warp (i.e.
the yarns that run vertically) were woven in a wave-like pattern that from afar appeared to be a cozy nubby knit. She used it to make a slim skirt which was elegant in its silhouette but had a workhorse quality due to its almost rough, natural hand. She paired it with her classic oversized silk and wool blend button-down whose sheen was a perfect foil.
Partow is invariably drawn to specialty metallic fabrics whose touch rarely matches what is seen by the eye. For resort, a tissue-thin (as in, really, tissue-thin) metallic lamé was used on a sort of oversized T-shirt and midi-length drawstring skirt. It is hard to describe the color because it went from gold to silver to mustard yellow to gray depending on how the light hit it.
“It�.