Adam Lippes, at Home for Spring '17 | Fashion Week Journal

Adam Lippes, at Home for Spring '17 | Fashion Week Journal

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Working from home always sounds like a good idea, but as anyone who has ever done it knows, it's doesn't necessarily make anything easier. "It can be challenging, showing the collection this way," Adam Lippes tells me as he takes a pause from directing his crew and looks around his West Village townhouse.

Adam Lippes in his home about an hour before showtime, as models stand by.
All images by Michael Yuri Chard

As we speak-about an hour before the first round of editors and buyers is set to arrive-the space is filling up with models in the loose, luxurious silhouettes that make up his new collection. Outside, floral designers and installers build out an intricate explosion of blooms and branches in the window boxes, stairs and patios. While other designers rent sleek event spaces or historical halls, Adam presents his collections in his gorgeous living and dining rooms each season.

Why do it this way? Why take on the challenge of rearranging your entire home, getting the neighbors to sign off on the all-day takeover? Why subject the beloved labradoodles to the rigors and quirks of fashion?

"Clothes do not live on the runway. Clothes live here. I design with this place in mind, with women's lives and their homes in mind," Adam told me.

It's a compelling argument made even stronger by the sight of the spring silhouettes and colors filling his already-art-filled home. Adam tells me he isn't able to fit all the looks into these rooms, and he admits that things get a little cramped once the industry files in, but the tradeoff seems more than worth it.

"We serve breakfast, we're able to connect and talk. It's really important for me not to show my clothes on a runway. I hope that everyone leaves having had a really great experience."

Aside from the personal, real-life experience that an in-home presentation allows, this environment allows everyone who passes through to really see the clothes. To touch the fine fabrics, to feel the expanse of the generous trousers and the form-hugging sheath dresses. And the prints.

Adam collaborated with Milanese porcelain painter Costanza Paravicini of Laboratorio Paravicini, who, as Adam puts it, "Recreates classic patterns for now-which is what I do with clothing."

A set of her plates, inspired by the botanical drawings of the 17th-century scientist Sir Hans Sloane, yielded a color palette of black, white, navy, lime, citron, deep turquoise and bright red. For further inspiration and insight, Adam traveled to Jamaica, where Sloane himself had spent a number of years documenting "natural curiosities."

(It's worth noting, as Adam did in his thoughtful program notes, that Sloane is also credited with more or less introducing chocolate milk to the States when he came back home.)

Prints, patterns and specific shapes were developed by taking Sloane's lead, and by studying the island nation's traditional dress-and then abstracting it. Dresses inspired the wide legs, skirts turned into bell sleeves.

"We do American sportswear," said Adam, and then, amending himself: "Luxury sportswear. But I don't use that term loosely." There in the townhouse-and in our stores-the distinction is obvious.

Still, "These aren't red carpet clothes. These clothes are for everyday life. "

A very, very beautiful and worldly life.

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-Laura Cassidy

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