There is nothing basic about Stacey Bendet. She has a bubbly personality, a rainbow-colored wardrobe, a sparkly jewelry collection, a penchant for sequins, and a signature beauty look: dense black eye shadow punctuating her bare, beautiful porcelain skin. But on the day that she presented her Resort 2020 collection at Alice + Olivia’s New York headquarters, the dark smoky eye was gone. (She was wearing a comfy-looking bright lavender top and trousers, though, and she’d piled on the necklaces and rings as usual.) Bendet was a mix of relaxed and ready for a challenge, like at any moment she could go sit outside and sip wine at Pastis around the corner or head to a meeting in the boardroom across from the studio space. This subtle place between the typical jazzed-up Alice + Olivia girl and her slightly more mature counterpart is exactly where the designer wanted her new Resort lineup to fall. So much so that, for the first time, Bendet introduced her own version of a basics line, including suiting separates and day-to-night dresses in monochrome palettes.
Those jackets, trousers, and tops are a smart addition to the A + O family. It was nice to see a larger range of clean, fresh silhouettes in Bendet’s mix, not only because it made the entire collection feel more diverse than usual but also because they’re well-made garments that can stand on their own without a hint of neon or a statement phrase.
Speaking of flash, though, there was still plenty of it here. Bendet’s mixed scarf prints gave the lineup a cool pop, as did the beautifully beaded, boho-inspired skirt styled with a simple black T-shirt. That’s the thing: Bendet does make a lot of clothes that can be paired with more pedestrian pieces like a tee or jeans. If those have been difficult to parse out in the past, they were certainly more visible in this Resort collection. Bendet is still Bendet at the end of the day, basics be damned, but she certainly struck an impressive balance this season between the extra and the everyday.
