Cerre fall-winter 2013: the most impressive collection to date
Clayton and Flavie Webster, husband-and-wife designers of the Los Angeles-based Cerre fashion line, are on a roll.
In October, they were honored by the L.A. fashion community with the Moss Adams Fashion Innovator Award. In February, they traveled to New York to meet press contacts and show the line to buyers for the first time. And on Wednesday, they had their first review posted on Style.com.
All of which is to suggest that the world is really taking notice of Cerre’s signature brand of edgy classicism.
That includes Hollywood, too. After providing custom leather jackets and bags for Rooney Mara’s title character in “The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo,” costume designer Trish Summerville has tapped them again to make pieces for the upcoming film “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” opening in November.
The designers celebrated all their recent success with a party Wednesday night at their store on Melrose Avenue, using the opportunity to showcase their fall/winter 2013 collection before a crowd that included singers Porcelain Black and Bruno Mars and actress Perry Reeves.
It was their most impressive and fully realized yet, from the buttery leather biker jackets with scarf details that have become a Cerre signature, to their first stab at prints, computer-generated graphics mixing motifs from Russian porcelain and psychedelia, Clayton explained. The print appears on leather-edged scarves, drapey maxi-skirts slit high on the leg, and an oversized shirt dress with an asymmetrical button placket that’s one of Flavie’s favorite pieces from the collection. “We fought about this one,” she explained. “Clayton said, ‘I want you to make a sexy dress!’ But this is so comfortable and easy to wear. You can put it over pants or belt it.”
While the Websters first met when they were both working as fashion models in Paris, they have taken their time learning the design side of the business, launching Cerre in 2005 as a collection of bags and small leather goods, then expanding into apparel for spring 2010. Everything is made on-site in the atelier behind their store, which is not far from Maxfield in West Hollywood.
For fall, they experimented with more color, creating an oversized biker jacket in a kind of powdery Yves Klein blue, and kimono coat in camel-hued leather. Flavie was also excited to present their first-ever suit, with cropped black trousers, a boxy white shirt with a small point collar, and an elegantly-draped black blazer, as soft and easy as a T-shirt, with leather piping detail.
The designers worked with wool for the first time, too, creating a cocoon coat with raw edges. They expanded their range of tops, showing a camel fleece sweatshirt with a cropped, high-low hem, a crisp white shirt with a double-layer sleeve detail, and a classically draped blouse with scarf-like detail that is already a favorite with Cerre customers.
They also showed a capsule collection of men’s pieces, including a boxy blazer with shawl collar and a leather baseball jacket.
“It’s an evolution of what we’ve always done,” Clayton said. “A combination of Flavie’s aesthetic and mine, and where we meet in the middle.”
Cerre, 8920 Melrose Ave., West Hollywood. Prices range from $245 to $3,125.
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