Marina Moscone Spring 2021 Ready-to-Wear Collection

Marina Moscone hasn’t left New York since March, something of a first for the designer. COVID-19 travel bans meant she couldn’t go to Italy, where she typically spends the summer visiting her family and working on her collection. As a non-U.S. citizen—Moscone was born and raised in Canada—she was advised against leaving the country in case coming back wasn’t an option. So she stayed in Chelsea with her sister and business partner, Francesca, and kept herself entertained by taking long, aimless walks throughout the city. “It really made me fall in love with New York again,” she said, “even though everyone else was trying to abandon it.” The past six months have certainly divided the “New York tough” from the nonbelievers. Moscone was intrigued by the women she saw on the street and the “pragmatic” way they styled themselves. What will they reach for in 2021, when things will likely feel just as uncertain as they do now?  

Moscone found herself thinking about the 1960s, when women’s fashion was both artful and quite simple: boxy shifts, crochet knits, tunics worn with cropped pants, trim suits. “These intelligent, pragmatic women need something they can just throw on and go about their day in,” she said, pointing out a casual “exploded” T-shirt in cream granite crepe, cut to the knee with fraying edges and coral ribbed trim. A similar navy T-shirt dress was patchworked with panels of handwoven recycled yarns, a carryover from Moscone’s resort collection, which she made almost entirely on a loom in her apartment. Spring’s standout dress featured more of those panels in shades of pale aqua, blush, and citrine, with over a foot of their unfinished yarns still attached. Cut like an extra-long T-shirt, it was her take on a “post-quarantine” gown: comfortable, yet striking, especially paired with her new plongé leather flats.

Moscone was surprised to report that women have been coming to her for even fancier stuff of late. They’re buying her signature heavyweight satin twisted dresses, perhaps in the hope that they’ll soon have somewhere to wear them. Moscone’s update for spring was a slinky jet-black halter dress, shown with a clay ornament she made in her kitchen. Her evening blouse was particularly ingenious: The draped panel around the shoulders is removable, so you can layer it over a slip dress, a camisole, or—Moscone’s suggestion—even a tee.