WHAT’S HOT
FROM LEFT Designer
Soyun Shin in her Larchmont studio. Charleston coat, $759. Sketches of the Fall 2014 collection. Diagonal hem sweater, $317. Blanket coat with belt, $1,090. Yarn samples. A rack of fall sweaters.
S
omeone once told me that designers shouldn’t design for themselves, they should always design for their customer,” says Soyun Shin from her loft studio in Larchmont Village. “But I think it’s a mistake not to ask, ‘Would I wear this?’” Armed with a strict “wearability test,” the fall lineup from Soyer (Shin’s five-year-old knitwear line) strikes the rare chord between high comfort and high fashion. While many pieces are 100 percent Italian cashmere, Shin plays with dimensional yarns, blending cashmere with baby alpaca, camel, yak and merino wools for both light and heavy layering pieces. Experimenting with volume and hemlines adds a refined edge. “Instead of overdesigning and making sure something looks good on paper, I focused on whether it was simple, efficient and something I would want to pick up every day,” she says. This is not the work of a fashion newcomer. Shin, a Ventura County native whose parents own an animation studio, graduated from Otis/ Parsons and spent almost two decades working as a designer for brands on the West Coast. An early stint at St. John in the mid-’90s, where she designed everything from buttons to jewelry, provided an introduction to woolens. She launched Soyer in 2009 earning the early support of retailers Desiree Kohan, Holly Boies of Salt and Curve’s Nevena Borissova. This fall, ribbed A-line sweaters, ground-skimming blanket coats and plunging pullovers are staples of the forward-thinking collection. She explains, “I think eventually we’ll introduce head-to-toe looks, but in that easy, chic, drawstring-pants-with-a-pair-of-heels kind of way.” soyerinc.com. •
C 80 SEPTEMBER 2014
PORTRAIT AND STUDIO (3): JESSICA SAMPLE. LOOKBOOK: KOMBUCHA DOG
Knit Picks WH (soyer)