Rachel Comey Pre-Fall 2022 Collection

Lately, Rachel Comey is everywhere. The quilted coat from her Target collaboration—everyday-easy and instantly identifiable in a vivid floral print—popped up all over town this winter. Earlier this month, the designer was name-checked in a New York Times Magazine piece in the same breadth as Gucci, and this past weekend, when she held a sample sale, the line down Mulberry Street was so long, it prompted an Instagram meme: “The hottest new club is the Rachel Comey sample sale,” it went.

Like Gucci’s Alessandro Michele, Comey has an eccentric eye. Though her customers will tell you they live in her clothes and tout their realness, she’s no minimalist. She likes off-colors and zany prints, and texture is always a big story in her collections. Pre-fall delivers on those fronts. A mottled silk slip dress was dyed using fruits and flowers that were bundled into the fabric, then left to make their imperfect imprints. There was a shibori-dyed denim karate gi with a similar hands-on effect, among denim coats cut like slouchy robes. But Comey’s focus here was on her knits: space-dyed separates and striped ribbed pieces cropped below the bust or cut with open backs for hot weather wearing, and a finer gauge dress that looked as comfy as a well-worn tee.

As the weather has slowly warmed up here in New York, the cropped tops have started multiplying, young women impatient for liberation. Which is why it seems fairly likely that this Rachel Comey collection with its cut-out bodices, fishnet mesh body stockings, and monokini à la Rudi Gernreich, will be everywhere soon too.