Yael Aflalo was in her office in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan on a recent Friday, considering the current fashion. “On one side of the spectrum, there are super boxy and oversize clothes, and then on the other, it’s extremely feminine,” she said. “I don’t think that’s how most consumers are.”
The first collection of her new clothing line, Aflalo, came out in September. “I wanted to make something that was — you’re supposed to say this word in luxury — ‘wearable,’ that you could just put on,” she said.
“Luxury” is a word Ms. Aflalo does embrace, with a caveat or two. She is a fan of fashion lines like Saint Laurent and the Row, but she finds that most large luxury houses treat their clothes as an afterthought.
“They are mainly concerned with their accessories and rightfully so, because that’s where they’re making their money,” Ms. Aflalo said. “So the clothes are not as thoughtful. I wanted to make a luxury brand where the clothing was the focus of the design team.”
Ms. Aflalo, 48, is a design veteran who has had her finger on the pulse of what women want to wear for 25 years. In 1999, she started Ya-Ya, which made casual dresses with a Southern California quality. (Ms. Aflalo grew up in Beverly Hills.)
In 2009, she started Reformation, a brand that built on the ease of Ya-Ya, but made with sustainable materials, largely deadstock fabrics. Customers shopping at the SoHo store were greeted with the words “Change the World Without Changing Your Style.”
Reformation was known for its dresses, which were body-baring with an ambitiously vintage design. They were also more affordable to 20-something millennial women than many high-fashion labels. The dresses became ubiquitous on summer wedding guests.
In 2019, Ms. Aflalo sold a majority stake to Permira and stepped down from her role as chief executive in 2020.
The Aflalo summer collection has a slinky quality, equally skin-baring and meant to be comfortable. There are several variations of black and white silk minidresses so short they can double as tunics, sheer powder blue double-layer silk gauze pants with drawstring waists, long shorts in yellow or black, and knit dresses cut low in the back.
“Quiet luxury and minimalism is shapeless,” she said. “That’s a perfectly stunning aesthetic, but I just don’t think it’s the only one. So I focused on making things that make you feel really good about yourself, that fit really nicely, that feel good on your body.”
Ms. Aflalo also makes more classic items, like black tanks and three cuts of jeans, which were what she was wearing, including the skinny, rigid Bishop jeans that are reminiscent of the skinny jeans of the early aughts.
She took a pair of Orwell jeans, a design that is cut like classic Levi’s 501s, off a rack and turned them inside out. The seams — Ms. Aflalo called them “the guts” — of the crotch had been finished to be smooth. “Reworked to be considerate of those oh-so-sensitive parts, enabling ladies and all other genders to wear skintight jeans confidently and free of internal injuries,” Ms. Aflalo wrote in a news release.
About half of the clothes are made in New York or Los Angeles. Leather goods are made in Italy and knitwear in China.
“These are not clothes for a girl but a woman,” said Mélanie Masarin, the founder of the beverage company Ghia and an early customer. “I don’t really wear black, and I like that there’s a lot of color. And not everybody is wearing it already.”
Prices are what Ms. Masarin called “an indulgence, but not so bad.”
Aflalo denim jackets are $570, and jeans are $370. Wool trousers are $610. A cashmere cardigan is $410. A trench coat is $1,100, and a long leather coat is $1,100.
“I am very thoughtful about prices,” Ms. Aflalo said. “I think they’re crazy right now. I finally graduated to the level where I could buy luxury clothes, and then they moved the goal-post. I’d struggle because I also know how much things cost. And the quality really wasn’t there.”
The Aflalo line unapologetically embraces sexuality and being flattering to its customers, which include some of Ms. Aflalo’s cohort of corporate founders.
“I joke that I often look like a priest,” said Liza Laswerow, a founder of the rug company Nordic Knots, on the phone from Sweden. “I dress sober in black crew necks and all that. What Yael has done is give me a uniform that is just slightly more sexy.”
Cassia Skurecki, a photo producer in Los Angeles, is of a similar mind: “Yael and I have a joke that I couldn’t dress less slutty, but I bought the see-through dress and wore it in Mexico with a pretty bra. I thought, ‘Well, that’s my entire body showing,’ but I loved it and sent her a picture.”
Ms. Aflalo left Reformation after allegations of racism surfaced on social media from past employees — accusations that were dismissed by a third-party investigator. At that point she was figuring out what she wanted to do next.
“I was like, ‘I’m never doing clothes again,’” she said. “I was really burned out.”
First, she did some investing under Daughters Capital, her fund focused on businesses founded by women. She still invests, including in the Six Bells, the home goods and hospitality business started by Audrey Gelman, a founder of the Wing, and in the publication The Free Press.
She has designed a line of irreverent and whimsical lab-grown diamond jewelry, including a toe ring, with the fashion writer Leandra Medine, who styles some of the Aflalo photo shoots.
Ms. Aflalo, who lives in the West Village of Manhattan with her husband, the creative director Ludvig Frössén, and two children, has plenty of plans for the line. She is close to signing a lease for a boutique in SoHo and wants to design shoes and other leather goods.
Mostly, she’s just happy to have returned to the world of fashion.
“I realized that I love shopping, I love clothes, I love a fitting,” she said. “I missed working with my hands.”
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