Eckhaus Latta Is Still the Real Deal

There was sweat, mesh and worn-out denim – and then, unexpectedly, roll necks, twinsets and chinos. Eckhaus Latta’s Spring/Summer 2027 collection found new tension in American prep

One of the best things about the clothes Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta make under their combined surnames is how unexpected they are. Eckhaus Latta is a label you can never quite nail down. Just when you think you’ve got the measure of them, and their approach – for the past few seasons, an unzipped, workwear-led approach with an oddly earthy sensuality, a corporeality of bodies exposed by clinging fabrics or direct cut-outs on dancing bits of flesh – they flip the switch. For sure, this Spring/Summer 2027 season carried on with their body-consciousness, skewed tank tops and narrow dresses in overlaid net shifting with the form beneath. “It feels good to sweat in order to sweat again,” was the closing line of their always-spare show notes, which seemed to sex everything up a notch.

But at the end of this show, Eckhaus and Latta flipped it all, encouraging their audience to scatter confetti to a soundtrack of canned laughter and unveiling an innocent collection of mild-mannered preppyism in collaboration with 79-year-old ultra-trad American retail giant J Crew. About 27 pieces in all, its roll necks and twinsets, double-waisted chino trousers and sweet cropped duffel coats seemed to be dragging Eckhaus Latta out of its natural downtown habitat and into the Ivy League.

At least, for a moment. In reality, what makes what Eckhaus Latta does so compelling is its grubbiness – not literally, but rather ideologically, a kind of grit that implies a real life to these resolutely unspectacular clothes. Some of these were actually patinated, like twist-seam jeans in worn-out indigo denim, or crushed-looking fabrics woven with some kind of metal, cut into slit-front skirts or pinched and zippered tops. A bunch of these clothes were cut on the curve, meaning they seemed to sit slightly uncomfortably against the body, as if somehow warped from time or motion – maybe washed once too many, whizzed in a too-hot dryer. There’s a lint-tray feel to Eckhaus Latta’s colour palette too, flashes of bright pink or orange overlaid with drab grey or black like a woven layer of grime.

Helmut Lang casts a long, skinny shadow over these clothes. But luckily it’s more in an attitude to design than in lifting specific details, bar the sleeveless crewneck cuts of some of Eckhaus Latta’s best dresses, and their layered mesh separates (fortunately they look good – and, more importantly, relevant – a second time around). The word people used – still use – to describe Lang clothes is urban. They were made for a metropolis. There’s the same sense to Eckhaus Latta, albeit a metropolis that’s a bit more bashed-up and about than Lang. It’s also, technically, two, given that they work in exchange between Eckhaus in New York and Latta in Los Angeles. That is, of course, how real people live – which is another idea embedded in these clothes, a sense of actuality rather than performance. Even the sex that they somehow fuse into every seam seems like sticky, palm-against-the-window stuff rather than sanitised, ring-lit OnlyFans fodder. Unlike so much of fashion’s posturing, these clothes manage to convince you, season after season, that their intentions are honest. If it’s workwear, you believe they’re working in it; if it’s sports, they’ll sweat. Eckhaus Latta, indeed, is the real deal.

This season, it seems, it’s even really J Crew.