Adam Lippes’ Determined Return

The way one chooses to present him or herself says a lot about the person. There are those who forgo their last names, those who skip their given names entirely and then there are those who celebrate themselves from the first initial to the last, the beginning to the end — highlighting where they’ve been, where they are and perhaps, too, where they intend to go with a sense of pride that when agitated will either kill you or set you free.

Designer Adam Lippes has tangoed with two forms of his own appellation presentation. In 2004, he launched his comtemporary ready-to-wear label, Adam. In 2010, he sold it only to step down a year later and ultimately return to fashion in 2013 baring a surname. This was possibly to prove a sense of evolution or maybe to underscore the poignancy and gravitas with which the new brand was to be received.

Seven seasons past the inception of his launch with Fall 2013, the design veteran is proud. His vision is being executed with the acute accuracy he learned to expect while at the helm of Oscar de la Renta and as far as he can tell, his clothes are what they need to be: “The core pieces in your wardrobe that you keep coming back to.”

Great clothes have a way of making you feel like you’re being hugged by their designer and that’s precisely what Adam Lippes, with his poplin tunics and solid cardigans decorated by lace net backsides and sleek trousers — leather or otherwise — does. He hugs you. And not unwittingly.

“A lot of designers think they need to be insular, there’s this weirdness in behavior. It used to be that they had this openness and desire to learn — they wanted to be with their customers, but a lot of designers today have this celebrity idea, that they’re celebrities and should be hidden or closed.”

Pre-Fall 2015 accentuates a point about his woman that Lippes reiterates several times: his clothes are “what she’s wearing underneath the big, loud fashion coat.” The designer seems to be paving way among a new legion of clothes-makers who aren’t looking to “disrupt” the fashion industry with their tricks and gags. They are, in an Alber Elbaz-ian fashion, manufacturing a lifestyle that whispers its strengths. A lifestyle that isn’t even quite about fashion.

In recalling his relationship with Oscar de la Renta, he says, “It wasn’t about fashion, fashion was something Oscar did. It was about art, and culture — cultures, and femininity and entertaining.”

Apropos it is, then, that his last collection should be heavily inspired by the Japanese architect Kengo Kuma, whose work he described to Style.com as “traditional but modern and simple, like what we’re trying to do here.”

If the new guard designers are about unilateral luxury, Lippes is a champion at the forefront. “Our clothes tend to be simple, but they’re not basic,” he says. There are few colors save for two pairs of marsala bottoms present in Pre-Fall, but the unflinching quality and texture present (there is one trench coat that comes lined in satin, several shearling pieces and buttons large enough to catch your eye) speak to the anima of his shopping ethos: “It’s not about buying it because people know what it is, it’s buying it for yourself. To feel good.”

As of right now, Adam Lippes is stocked at 75 locations. This is a vast difference from the 400 that carried his contemporary label, which he notes as having been much more about what the clothes looked like rather than how they were made. But he feels comfortable in that. Confident, even, because as he said time and again, “I’m so proud of the clothes.” And pride, incidentally, can mean everything.

Images courtesy of Haan Projects