By choice (and circumstance), Maryam Nassir Zadeh’s spring collection is framed by her changing relationship with time. The designer seems to be going through a troubled period, a period that started with her spring 2023 collection, which she assembled from her textile archive, sometimes using no-sew techniques, into experiments that were not for sale. There may not have been much of a market for skirts that don’t make a full circle around the waist, but the sense of spontaneity—of the idea of fashion as basic coverage—was exciting.
Continuing her process of rediscovery, Zadeh went through the archives stored in her parents’ home, as she had designed the fall of 2023. Now, for spring 2024, she seems right where she wants to be, right between what has been and what will be.
“When I started designing in my early twenties, I made a lot of mistakes; if something worked, I thought, ‘Oh wow, I know what people want. If I have the instinct, I’ll go for it.’ And I kept changing things all the time,” she said during a walk-through. “And then I realized, the older I got, that consumers don’t want you to change so quickly. People want you to stay.”
Based on this observation, the new collection is a mix of remixes (such as a cardigan from the brand’s first season) and new pieces. How Zadeh infuses a covetable air of disposable chic with ‘little things’ like semi-sheer knits, a silk tunic and ribbed marl tank tops remains a mystery, but that she does so is certain.
One of the heroes of this series is a shawl that can be worn as a skirt or as a dress, inspired by the cover-up worn by Zadeh’s mother in the 90s. It’s essentially an easy skirt with scarf top that you tie yourself. It’s holiday-ready, but also has the lived-in Lower East Side coolness that Zadeh’s work has become synonymous with. “What I have been trying to achieve for so long is this sensitivity that I look for a lot… when a garment has spirit in it and it has lightness and delicacy in the way it is made.” The difference with MNZ is that there is nothing precious about this light-hearted sensibility.
Nassir Zadeh named the collection Rush because it was shot and styled post-haste after being released from customs at the last minute, which meant relinquishing control to some extent and going with the flow, within the available time and with the documents that were available. In this age of impression-taking selfies and fit photos, Zadeh’s aesthetic of spontaneity (the lookbook was styled, however hastily) reminds us that playing with fashion purely for fashion’s sake is still a thrill.
