Consider the following scenario: It’s Saturday night and you are dancing at a nightclub—assuming you’re full of the youthful energy required for the activity, that is. You look up to find a familiar yet entirely unexpected face. It’s your grandmother, who has broken out of clubbing retirement to dance her heart out. You recognize her outfit, too. It’s her Sunday best—there’s only a couple hours left until the morning, after all.
Reid Baker and Inês Amorim are aware of, if simultaneously amused by, the ludicrousness of this concept. The overarching idea was a more specific juxtaposition: “goth grandma.” The idea here, they explained at their presentation this afternoon in Paris, was to leverage the tried and true elements of Ernest W. Baker, specifically its old-school cool rooted in sharp tailoring and a certain dressiness, with something that would break it up aesthetically. Enter: goth, or at least their version of it.
The designers remixed a few of their own hits—sharp flares, tailored zip-up jackets, and hand crocheted knits—with some goth-adjacent details: blood-red beads all over the knits or delicately placed on the side seams of trousers; high contrast black-and-white florals collaged with or placed on top of cheetah prints; and black patent, lots of it, across tailoring and a fabulous pair of almost knee-high boots.
Baker and Amorim have surely been more adventurous in the past, but this was still one highly effective delivery. It’s a complicated climate for independent designers. Who could fault them for doing what they do best? “There’s also this idea of knowing yourself,” said Baker, in regards to placing the grandmother at the heart of their collection. Self-awareness comes with age, and that’s one thing these designers seem to have entirely clear: Ernest W. Baker knows exactly who he is.
