Paying homage to Art Deco and Abstract Expressionism
The collection takes its premise from two histories the Hamptons is known for — the Art Deco order characteristic of F. Scott Fitzgerald's Jazz Age, and the fearless abstraction of Jackson Pollock, who made his most radical work a short drive from the estate where the show was held. One pursues proportion whereas the other embraces chance.
Yet, Chen’s collection asks neither to defeat the other, highlighting the concept of “harmony” in Eastern philosophy.
Across 40 looks in silk, linen, light wool and organza, architectural restraint and a drop-waist, unhurried line met poured pigment, hand-dyeing, resin texture and transparent layering. Beading and dimensional embroidery were worked flat into the surface rather than applied to it.
The palette moved from black, champagne, ivory and gold through ink and abstraction into what the house calls its Harmony palette.
The clothes were cut to be lived in. Little was fastened tightly; nothing was engineered to hold the body in place. It is a proposition the house describes as luxury that is worn rather than performed — couture for the estate lunch, the private gathering and the gallery, as much as for the gala.
Introducing Style Lab
Alongside the collection, the house introduced Style Lab — a practice concerned with the question that precedes the dress: why a style that works beautifully on someone else does not work on her.
Its premise is that most women are not short of clothes. They are short of a method. A luxury house typically asks a woman to enter its signature; a trend asks her to follow it. Style Lab begins instead with her own proportions, her life stage, and the rooms she actually walks into, and builds a personal style system outward from there.
The practice draws on the atelier's private client work — years of individual fittings in Shanghai and New York — and sets it down as something that can be studied and applied rather than intuited: frameworks covering proportion and cut, presence, life stage, and aesthetic character, resulting in a written personal style report.
It is addressed to women between 30 and 55 who have arrived somewhere — founders, executives, mothers at a child's wedding, women in transition — and are looking for a durable way to dress rather than another purchase.
“Style Lab is where a woman comes to understand herself. Grace Chen is where that understanding is made,” Chen said.
