Collina Strada SS27: Must Be the Season of the Witch?

Something strange has wandered into the meadow. Under bright daylight at Storm King Art Center, ruffles drag through grass, princess dresses lose their manners, sequins catch against plaid, and women in black move through the landscape with the vague authority of a coven that has claimed the afternoon for itself. Hillary Taymour called the collection Detour, imagining clothes immersed in grass, steel, sky and sculpture while celebrating the beauty of getting lost, choosing the longer path and allowing identity to keep changing along the way. It was also the first runway show ever staged at Storm King.

Nature has always occupied Collina Strada’s universe, though rarely as a polite pastoral fantasy. Here the meadow becomes somewhere to escape into after civilisation has become a little exhausting. Medieval romance collides with punk and Y2K; volume swells and slips around the body; recycled sequins sparkle beside chiffon and lace. Taymour’s stated references stretch from A Knight’s Tale to modern rebellion, yet once they are released into the landscape, another character seems to emerge on her own: a woman slightly wild around the edges, overdressed for the woods and somehow entirely at home there.

The Party Is Over. Meet Us in the Garden.

Whatever happened the night before, nobody appears remotely embarrassed about it.

The first group carries the delicious disorder of an after-party that has simply refused to end indoors. Draping slips away from the body, ruffles gather in exaggerated bursts, hems trail and underwear proportions appear beneath expanses of fabric. The styling keeps everything slightly off balance, as though the clothes were put back together at sunrise with more instinct than patience.

That messiness is carefully engineered. Hillary Taymour has been exploring volume without allowing it to become cumbersome, and the softer shapes here expand around exposed sections of the body instead of swallowing them whole. Skin, shine and oversized fabric coexist with an ease that makes the morning-after mood look almost ceremonial. This is a walk of glory through the grass, never a walk of shame.

Even footwear joins the rebellion. Balletcore ankle ties and ruffled edges bring a girlish softness close to the ground, then Collina Strada SS27 roughens the idea through its own playful footwear language. The show included collaborations with both Converse and Keen, while ruffled sneakers pushed the ballerina suggestion into something considerably less obedient.

The party may be finished. Apparently, the garden has an after-hours policy.

The Princess Has Left the Castle

Somewhere along the detour, the girls appear to have misplaced the palace.

The dresses grow longer and more romantic, carrying echoes of court dress without slipping into historical costumes. Volume gathers around the body with a certain ceremonial grandeur, while Elizabethan style ruff collars rise around the neck like remnants of an old royal portrait dragged into the present. Taymour lets those aristocratic references loosen almost immediately, disrupting their formality with uneven proportions, softer construction and the kind of styling that suggests the princess has already escaped through the garden gate.

Their romance is gloriously unruly. Plaid enters where one might expect brocade, proportions loosen where a court dress would usually demand control, and the models cross open grass with the confidence of women who have already decided castle life was terribly overrated. A little princess remains in the posture and sweep of the clothes; the obedience has vanished.

Alice may have taken a wrong turn. The princess may have climbed down from the tower. Either way, nobody seems interested in finding the road back.

That distinction keeps Collina Strada’s fantasy alive without letting it become precious. These women belong to the landscape precisely because they look slightly misplaced inside it. Romance becomes stranger once the ballroom has been traded for a meadow, and stranger still when the gown begins to look happier there.

Did the Ren Fair End at the Club?

By the middle of the collection, somebody has clearly found the speakers.

The medieval haze acquires a faint residue of the 2000s club floor: shine against plaid, sheer layers under casual pieces, graphic tops thrown into combinations that look as though they have accumulated over several nights out. Calling the section full indie sleaze would flatten what Hillary Taymour is doing. The source language is broader: punk, Y2K, grunge and what reads visually as a messy cool-girl attitude, but indie sleaze certainly haunts the edges.

Collina Strada has never been especially interested in pristine revival. A period reference enters the brand’s universe and comes out slightly corrupted. Sequins lose their red-carpet politeness, tailoring gains odd companions, and familiar party clothes acquire the looseness of something worn long enough to develop a story.

History becomes considerably more entertaining once nobody is guarding the dress code.

Here Comes the Witch

The coven does not wait for nightfall.

Black enters the meadow under full sun and changes the temperature of everything around it. Ruching, transparency and loose draping remain part of the language, yet the softness now carries a faint menace. Bodies appear and disappear through sheer fabric; volume shifts around shoulders and hips; trailing panels disturb the grass behind them.

The goth spirit lies in its refusal to become heavy. Collina Strada keeps black porous, allowing skin, transparency and flashes of ornament to break through the darkness. The silhouettes shift between cling and volume, so the clothes never settle into severity. They look touched by goth, then loosened again by the same unruly softness running through the rest of the collection.

Nor does black settle into anything too severe. The silhouettes keep shifting around the body, sometimes close, sometimes swollen, sometimes barely held together by transparency. Darkness moves with them, broken by glints of light and exposed skin, until the whole group seems less dressed in black than briefly swallowed by it.

Perhaps “witch” was never the assignment. It is simply what happens when romance gets lost in the woods for long enough.

Collina Strada SS27 Takes the Long Way Home

Only weeks earlier, Collina Strada had appeared in Copenhagen as the inaugural International Guest for CPHFW SS27, a one-off slot created with The Climate Pledge. Copenhagen gave Hillary Taymour another stage for fantasy; New York sends that fantasy somewhere messier, louder and more grass-stained.

Continuity matters less as a neat progression than as proof that Collina Strada works best when its world remains porous. Romance can cross borders, pick up punk along the way, lose its shoes in a field and return wearing something completely different. The brand’s coherence has never depended on travelling in a straight line.

Detour makes that philosophy literal. One season can lead to another without behaving like a sequel, and a designer can carry pieces of an idea forward while letting the landscape change what they mean.

So perhaps the witches were only passing through. With Collina Strada SS27, getting lost still looks like the most promising way forward.