Au Jour Le Jour designers Diego Marquez and Mirko Fontana started their fledgling business with womenswear just over five years ago. Today, it looks like they found a groove.
For one thing, the animal theme that was also the baseline for their men’s Fall collection lends itself more easily to womenswear. Tassels, too, work better on women’s clothing, although it takes a strong personality to pull embellishments like that off. Their faux fur coats, such as a leopard with blue shearling, a shaggy caramel number, and a black bomber with faux shearling, were much more covetable for being nearly tassel-free. The designers also duly ticked the boxes on a few of the season’s major currents: lace (sweatshirts, for example), embroidered fauna, and lingerie dressing—at times combining all of these on a single piece.
Clearly, the Au Jour Le Jour woman is unafraid of mixing things up. She’s likely well under 40, almost certainly in a creative field, and sticks with what she loves, whether the rest of the world gets it or not. And the world could probably use a much larger helping of that kind of attitude.
