Clubwear tees up and Anjé gets comfortable at Style Fashion Week

Style Fashion Week, the last of three -- count ‘em three -- fashion weeks in Los Angeles this time around, closed out the calendar on Oct. 18, bringing 14 days of shows in two downtown venues and one Hollywood space to an end.

Before taking a look back at the lumpy, misshapen beast that is the current state of Los Angeles Fashion Week (which we hope to do in an upcoming post), we wanted to highlight two of the brands showing last Thursday night as part of the Style Fashion Week lineup.

The first was Clubwear, a year-old Reno, Nev.-based line, the conceit of which, according to its Facebook page, is the ability to go from playing golf to partying down “with just a change of shoe.”

Designer Christine Hilts’ spring 2016 collection consisted of a series of traditional women’s golfing and tennis silhouettes -- short dresses, track jackets, skirts, shorts, cropped trousers -- rendered in shimmery, stretchy black fabric and what looked like gold Lurex, with metallic accents that included a bold golden paisley print on a black tennis skirt. In theory, a line of smart-looking separates designed to ease the transition from country club to nightclub sounds like a good idea -- especially given the popularity of the whole athleisure trend -- but how many ladies are going to simply come off the links, swap out the golf bag for a handbag and head out for the evening? (Not to mention what it might feel like to wear a black and gold metallic outfit while playing 18 holes of golf on a bright, sunny day.)

More realistically, Clubwear’s spring 2016 collection is for the woman who wants to spend a night on the town looking like she could have spent a day on the links (or is headed out to the course tomorrow), and by that measure Hilts gets it pretty close to the tee.

Another label that came down the catwalk last Thursday night was Anjé, a New York-based line designed by Angela Brasington. A study in stripped-back chic, the spring 2016 collection included a range of simple and straightforward dresses, skirts and tops grounded in a palette of black, white and gray. Standouts included effortless looking button-front shirtdresses with asymmetrical hems, a wrap in a hound’s-tooth check pattern and a series of simple black cocktail dresses, some with sheer panel or cutout details.

We had a chance to chat briefly with Brasington backstage after the show and she said her 1 1/2-year-old fledgling line was a result of her own experiences. “I worked my way up in this business over the last decade,” she told us, “And one of the things I noticed was that clothes just weren’t as comfortable as they could be.”

By way of illustration, Brasington picked up the hem of her own dress, turned it over and ran her hand along the backside of the fabric. “So for some of the dresses I’ve actually turned it so the smoother side is against the skin. … I wanted to create something that catered to the workaholic woman -- something that was chic, sophisticated and sexy and that a woman could be comfortable going out for a drink after work.”

From where we sat, that pretty much makes Brasington’s spring 2016 collection a flag-rattling hole-in-one.

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