There are some people who would rather be overdressed than underdressed. Rentrayage’s Erin Beatty is not one of them. “I would always rather feel underdressed and cool,” she explained at a recent appointment. “With everything that’s going on in the world, I wasn’t feeling very frivolous, and fashion that felt frivolous felt wrong to me. I wanted to make sure I felt really grounded in other ways.”
Beatty does not reinvent the wheel every season; she knows what she likes and she knows what she’s good at and she keeps refining her vision. For fall, there was a new jean jacket silhouette inspired by a workwear jacket, and a wide-leg jean with a patchwork inset at the legs, both made from deadstock denim. Her experiments with grommets made for some really fresh pieces, like a blue and white striped button-down with all over grommets on the front, or the skirt cut from the bottom half of a suit jacket with grommets trimming the hem. She also continued working with mixed media pieces, like a jacket that was half jean jacket on the top and quilted surplus on the bottom, a cardigan with two “collaged” rows of button plackets that allowed for an adjustable fit, or the tweed blazer with a surplus quilted sweetheart inset on the front. An easy silver hammered silk gown with a v-neck and slightly voluminous sleeves expertly captured Beatty’s mood for the moment; elegant, but grounded.