About halfway through Jane Wade’s fall 2024 show, a model walked out carrying a snowboard. Earlier that day, meteorologists announced that a powerful winter storm would be hitting the Northeast. It snowed overnight and well into the next day. It was the most snow New York City had seen in years.
Wade, who hails from Portland, launched her eponymous label in 2022, and this fall 2024 season is her first on the official NYFW calendar. She studied fashion in San Francisco and punched the clock at a Levi’s store, “working on repairs, learning about sewing machines, and even doing some pattern work,” she told me when I met her ahead of her spring show last fall. After a study-abroad stint in London at Central St. Martins, she scored an internship with Alexander Wang in New York, where she worked for a year-and-a-half while finishing college online. Next came a position with Danielle Frankel. “I was doing design, development, and overseeing production, which was a more operational role than I wanted,” said Wade. But the company was small, which allowed her to listen in on wholesale meetings, costing and margin conversations, and more. “At Wang everything was separate, so you didn’t even know what market looked like, but Danielle was like an open kitchen format of a company, so you knew what was going on.” Wade went on to work with Elena Velez while building her own collection on the side.
Few designers score wholesale accounts with their debuts these days, but Wade received an order from Bergdorf Goodman, signing on with a two-season exclusive. It lifts this season, which means Wade has a whole new world of buyers and market appointments to discover, or be discovered by. She’ll be taking her collection to Paris later this month.
The appeal in Wade’s clothes hinges on their functionality. Wade herself is fascinated by American corporate culture. Her spring show focused on the idea of commuting, while her fall lineup is devoted to “out of office” gear. Her keenness for utility goes back to her father, a contractor. “I grew up around him in his Dickies and Converse, wearing a version of the same outfit everyday.” Her mother is a hairstylist, and Wade would flip through fashion magazines with her at work. This duality is at the root of what she does as fashion designer: “I always liked to see how garments serve people and how we serve and interact with our clothes,” she said.
Wade works only with natural fibers, very rarely diving into synthetics, bar a utility detail or two. This informs her color palette, which is most often cool and neutral with a few touches of brown and off-white. She knows her way around cotton shirting, cutting playful and imaginative iterations of a white-collar button-down that swaddles the body in all the right places. Her denim and cotton twill pieces are particularly compelling, and this season she experimented with leather and hand-knitted styles in shaggy wools to positive results.
Watching the show felt a little like walking around in the Financial District on a fall day. Lots of grays and steel blues that lift your eyes skyward, with a hint of nature every now and then that brings you back down to Earth.
See the full Jane Wade fall 2024 ready-to-wear collection below.
