At the Collina Strada spring 2025 show, held in a small private park in the East Village, a model somersaulted onto the runway; grabbed a chunk of grass with her bare hand; playfully threw it at Paramore’s Hayley Williams, who was sitting front row; and sauntered away in a mix of artful dancing, acrobatics, and death drops that were more akin to diving into the earth. Hillary Taymour had titled this collection Touch Grass.
“I feel like everyone is a bit overwhelmed this season,” she explained a few days earlier at a preview at her studio. “There’s a lot of chaotic energy with everything that’s happening on the planet and the election, and so I’m just trying to be grateful that I have a small, healthy business; trying to find inner peace, keep a smile on my face, and not get overwhelmed.”
Outside, the sun set on Manhattan and a gentle breeze began blowing exactly as the second model, in a diaphanous slip dress with twisting and undulating long sleeves in a print that could very well be called “colors of the wind” made her way down the runway, her long, crimped blonde hair with the ends dyed green dragging on the ground behind her. Groovy jazz music was on the soundtrack. A few minutes into the show and it was evident everyone was enjoying a genuinely lovely New York City day.
Just as lovely, and also romantic, were the clothes. A plethora of ruffles decorated asymmetrical dresses, barely there slip dresses, and even the back of a terrific tailored black satin jacket worn as part of a suit. Shell tops in lace and mesh were decorated with gathers or pleats or even sculpted flowers; classic sweatshirts had billowing chiffon sleeves; and chunky mesh boots were worn with ruffly lace socks (the first from the designer’s own in-house brand). Even the less outwardly femme pieces still had a certain softness about them—see the plaid tweed jacket paired with a washed striped button-down shirt and a bubbly little doughnut pouf of a miniskirt.
Prints were delivered two ways—in levels of brightly saturated color or washed as if they’d been picked up at the beach after being in the sun and the salt water, banging against the rocks for several weeks. Although the color palette was largely made up of pastels, it was grounded by a series of all-black looks at the end, as well as bold turquoise.
Halfway through the show, Ashlee Simpson’s 2004 song “Pieces of Me” started playing on the soundtrack, except this was a bossa nova version with the lyrics changed to be about Collina Strada and eating one’s vegetables. Everything about it was charming and, crucially, self-assured. “We’re still trying to have a fun, goofy Collina, but in a grown way,” Taymour said. She certainly accomplished it. There was a sense that after a few seasons where the designer seemed to be exploring the limits of a certain kind of maximalism, she’d decided to strip everything back and find the singular essence that makes Collina Strada. The closing model wore a black lace top with matching black bloomers and pushed an “analog” lawn mower while sporting a pair of glasses from the designer’s newly launched sunglasses line like he was breaking ground before planting a garden.
