Adam Lippes Spring 2023 Ready-to-Wear

Collections inspired by designers’ travels have been few and far between these last two years. When the pandemic closed borders, fashion turned inward; horizons narrowed and we lived in loungewear. Designer Adam Lippes had the good fortune to go exploring again earlier this year, and a two week trip to Egypt provided him not just with inspiration—he sketched the country’s native flowers for this season’s prints—but also with new production partners. The fine cottons he used here were produced by Hesni, the country’s oldest mill, and he partnered with Threads of Hope, a Cairo organization that employs refugees, to create some of the embroideries. This doesn’t read like a destination collection of old, however. Lippes’s vocabulary is well-defined; his work is rooted in American sportswear and he knows his way around a pretty party dress. This outing delivered on both of those fronts. If you didn’t know the exquisite tapestry linen-silk blend of a crop top and full skirt were influenced by Egyptian architectural details, you would’ve simply assumed they came out of Lippes’s avowed love for interiors. Other notably lovely textiles included the ivory silk leno weave of the show’s opening look, a material whose delicacy belies its strength, and the blanket stripe linen of a poncho worn over cuffed khaki trousers, a swaggering outfit. A sundress in a vivid red and a camp shirt and bikini top set in deep brown were hand-crocheted in Kenya.