Libertine Fall 2025: Joy-filled Fashion Just When We Need It
Anyone lamenting the dourness across many of the recent New York fall 2025 collections should find Libertine a joy-filled antidote.
Over the last 24 years, L.A. designer Johnson Hartig has consistently upped the game of quality and details, managing to make luxury in America with his team of just 22 people, and cultivate a loyal client base for his artful, maximalist ready-to-wear. This collection, as ever, had a world of references including abstract art, Surrealism, Japanese gardens, Los Angeles sunsets and English landscape prints that all managed to work together like a well-decorated salon.
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He tapped into the world of multidisciplinary French artist Sonia Delaunay (the subject of a fabulous exhibition at the Bard Graduate Center museum in New York last year), after he stumbled on some gouache paintings he made 25 years ago with geometric abstractions similar to hers. From those, he developed peppy prints applied to a cropped jacket and mini, belted coat and pants sets, and even mules created in collaboration with Larroude. He also turned geometric forms into rainbow-hued crystal embroideries on gorgeous coats with matching Larroude embroidered suede boots.
Hartig went even more wild with embroideries on other pieces, essentially painting with beads and crystals on coat canvases, creating an abstract “Candyland” of lozenge shapes on one, and an Osaka-inspired Japanese scene with waves and nets and fish on another.
With psychedelic brocade, chain and cherry blossom embroideries and rainbow feather trim galore, the collection had a ton of eye-popping decoration. But Hartig has also done a great job over the past few years of developing his collections beyond showpieces, expanding into knitwear, suiting and separates for the woman who doesn’t always want to be a peacock. So he showed great cashmere knit dresses and sweaters in Delaunay-esque geometric patterns in more neutral gray and black tones, 1970s-like metallic leopard tunic and wide pants sets, and separates in a more moody, earth-toned Surrealist landscape print, which was different for him.
An ongoing collaboration with Schumacher and his passion for interiors in general have continued to influence his work, including a hand-sewn English rose patched tweed coat that echoed a recent wallpaper design.
“I’m reading a book about Elsie De Wolfe…” he said of the famous interior designer who called herself a “rebel in an ugly world.” “And this dinner party they gave in Paris that started at 2 a.m. and went on well past dawn. It’s another lifestyle!”
One where Libertine clothes would look right at home.
Launch Gallery: Libertine Fall 2025 Ready-to-Wear Collection
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