“SWEET ORCHESTRAL COVER”
COLLECTION DEVELOPMENT, STYLING, PRESS RELEASE
An unprecedented period of isolation blankets the world, limiting face-to-face communication and leaving many with little more than their own selves for company. Acquiescingly, Brian Tu and Wesley Tsai have chosen to make peace with that “self” by way of Murakami’s Norwegian Wood. It’s an uncanny source of inspiration for a COVID collection; the dynamics within the novel engender new understandings of motion, stillness, connection and suffering—all of which have pressing relevance in the new everyday.
Characters, moods, motifs, and even the most evocative sentences from the 1987 work are intertwined into Steele + Edith’s sophomore collection of wearables. Shirts and trousers alike are traced in arcs of piping that wrap precisely across seam lines—as intentional and sharp as Storm Trooper’s regimen. Fabrics range from ashen herringbone weaves (“death”) to lush tricolor mohair plaids (“life”). Oversize studs, raw hems, and wavy ricrac allude to juvenility—the greenness of university students—while details such as accentuated collars and militaristic pockets intensify the pervasive sense of organized austerity particular to academia.
The seasonal lookbook is directly inspired by the novel’s setting—late ’60s Tokyo, where a chronicle of loss and burgeoning sexuality comes to fruition. From this starting point, Tu and Tsai have crafted a vivid representation of protagonist Toru’s triumphs and troubles, most notably his relationship with life and death through the duality of the lively Midori and an emotionally turbulent Naoko.
