Zoe Champion had stars in her eyes when designing PH5’s fall line. The collection and the lookbook were informed by two different night sky adventures. The most recent took place at Warrumbungle in New South Wales, Australia, which is, Champion explained, “the first designated dark sky national park in the world. What that means is that there is no artificial light that you can see when you’re there because it’s sort of amongst a mountain range.” This lends an extra twinkle to the stars. On an earlier trip to Hawaii with brand cofounder Wei Lin, the colleagues stopped in the middle of a road and lay on their backs to observe the constellations; a memory which was recreated in the photographs.
The strongest looks in this collection were the most straight-forward: silhouette dresses with star twinkles, and stars on the back pocket of trompe l’oeil jeans. The carryover of flower prints and the mixed media pieces detracted from the cohesion of the collection. Champion’s thinking of polka dots as star companions didn’t quite land, but the way the designer worked a moon-shaped ring into the hem was interesting as it suggested an alternative to the brand’s customary squiggle edge, which sometimes delivers too much drama.
On the material development side, the team worked out a way to combine fluffy mohair with PH5’s dense, stretchy knit. Two-color reversible pieces were a technical delight, but overall the label is becoming increasingly ostentatious. The multiplicity of imagery, colors, fibers and embellishments felt confusing rather than convincing.
Not in the lookbook are pieces from the brand’s active wear collection, which it is easy to see expanding. PH5’s colors and the way their knits hold the body seem an ideal fit for developing distinctive performance gear. Think how cute a gym twin set, consisting of a cropped cardi and active tank, would be.
