Review of Lafayette 148 Fall 2025 Preview Ad Campaign by Creative Director Emily Smith
In tandem with its Fall 2025 presentation at New York Fashion Week, Lafayette 148 has launched a special, behind-the-scenes interview campaign that celebrates the voices and hands of the women designers and artists who shaped the collection. The Impression was lucky enough to be invited to the brand’s studio at the Brooklyn Navy Yard for an exclusive first look at the collection from creative director Emily Smith and her team.
Lafayette 148 is a rarity in the fashion industry in that its structure is truly vertical – extending from its roots as a fabric producer – with its own workshop and production facility. This enables the design team to have a unique level of control and experimentation within the textiles themselves, with the story of each collection taking shape from sketch to final design without ever leaving the brand’s hands.
Each of Lafayette 148’s collections centers around telling the story of a woman artist, with previous sources of inspiration coming from Anni Albers, undersung Venetian women painters, and many more. But this season, as Emily and her creative team began their process, they decided it was time to tell their own story – the story of the women’s hands that weave, knit, embroider, knot, and crochet, the art of craft.
“I never build a story or concept really unless it’s related to the brand itself in some way,” Emily explains. “That’s why I bring up the idea of being inspired by women artists working with other women artists, being a New York brand founded in the 90s and referencing New York minimalism, or drawing architectural influence from our studio’s view of Manhattan – there are always these avenues that go back to our DNA.
If it doesn’t feel real and authentic to our brand it doesn’t feel right to be inspired from it. This whole year, 2025, was inspired by the concept of craftsmanship.”
The year’s earlier collections drew from the process of charcoal sketching and oil painting, but Fall 2025 dives into the intricate crafting of a fashion collection itself. The pieces draw attention to and celebrate the very making of the fabrics and how the design team, as they put it, are always “nerding out” over textiles and craft. Director of Design for wovens Kyungin Choi sought to further highlight the organic warmth and flow of the brand’s signature double-face wool fabric, and brought it further to life through intricate hand-embroidered motifs that glide off the surface of the fabric. Reflecting on a love of being able to see the hands that went into a craft, Director of Design for knitwear Martina Sieg explains her process of being “hooked on the idea of a seamless transition from knit to weave” and it’s a delight to see how her beautiful handmade textile was translated into a skirt for the final collection. Senior designer Jaclyn Paulhus explains that they wanted a textile that would lift off the base fabric, but when the mill wasn’t quite able to get the three-dimensional effect she was after, she went back and hand-embroidered directly into the weft of the fabric, creating a rich texture that rises off the surface of the garment.
It’s exciting and inspiring to see the passion and creativity that the team brings to its creative process, and Lafayette 148 is smart to bring its audience more deeply into this process. Every garment tells a story, and here Lafayette 148 does beautiful work to tell these stories and champion the stories of the women artists behind them.
Lafayette 148 Creative Director | Emily Smith