Bordering on the edge of the quotidian, Spring 2025 leans on relaxed practicality teamed with a plush vein.
A trip to NN.07’s atelier makes you realise how critical the runway can be for a designer. How it makes them do unessential, excessive, even foolish things. A short list of the ridiculousness we’ve seen this week: bulky woollen coats used for blouses when breezier fabrics would do, stodgy animal prints that felt like a cheap second skin, and scrums of industry insiders left under heavy downpours. Yuck.
NN.07 isn’t a silly brand. It opts out of the catwalk for its ready-to-wear collections. Within it, clothes are clothes, fashioned to be worn. It lets essentialism do the talking, and its volumes are brilliant.
For Spring, it did a fantastic clean-cut dive, but most of its pieces have a sporty contemporary mien, cropped north of the ankle and featuring a linear streak of severity in its entirety. Inspired by the spirit of Milan in the 1970s, the Spring lineup featured warm browns that evoke the rich, earthy tones of vintage leather goods and Milanese architecture.
Adding in range, faded blues recall the subtle palette of the Lombardian sky, and the addition of lavender brings a poised, floral note reminiscent of blooming fields and retro styles. And speaking of styles, modular coats familiar to the brand’s Scandi counterparts reappeared this season in more every day yet researched fabrics.
For a thirst for warmth, NN.07 used Italian seersucker, Panama linen and reversed practicality to tailor to its broad customer base, but it was equally concerned with a more graphic punch, juxtaposing office to off-duty looks or piecing together playful fastenings and a sweetly potent, modern aesthetic. It was important for NN.07 to keep the rest of the collection streamlined, so it made the in-your-face tailoring monochromatic, with either very short or pretty long hemlines. (No wishy-washiness here).
I can’t help circling back to the brand’s slew of neutral shirting though. Did anyone else create one better? More proof that quite a few of fashion week’s most singular pleasures are to be found far from the runway.
by Chidozie Obasi