Before the Internet, Before the Rush

The story behind my summer collection

I was born in the wrong decade—or maybe I was born in the right one, but meant to bring back the values of the ones before it. I long for a simpler time. When letters were written by hand and photographs were printed and placed in albums. When things were made slowly, carefully, by people who took pride in what they were making. A pace of life where you stopped to talk to your neighbors, hosted dinner parties, and let the evening go where it wanted.

As a child, I used to help my grandparents scan and upload their old photographs. There’s something about those images that has never left me. They tell the story of their lives and travels, not posed, not performed, just them, in the moment. Pieces of themselves they captured for their closest circle. A way to hold onto a memory, to have something to point to and say this is when, and let the story unravel from there.

We live in a different time now. We snap a picture and move on. We document instead of experience. I can’t change that, but I can give you clothing that belongs to a different rhythm. Pieces that can be part of those moments, and that when you reach for them later, pull you right back, the way the best photographs do.

My second summer collection grew out of my own memories, summers spent exploring the Northern California coast, playing in the crystal blue of Lake Tahoe, living the kind of unhurried days that feel impossibly far away when you’re back at your desk. The palette came from those places. A crystal blue that matches the water on a clear morning. Cream like the sand beneath your feet. A white that’s pure. And our buttery yellow. I’ll come back to that.

I’ve been thinking about why European summers have landed at the top of my travel list, and probably yours. I think it’s because those towns, the small coastal ones that feel stuck in time, represent something we know we’ve lost. Clothing hung to dry. Fresh food. Nowhere particular to be. When I think of Europe in the summer, I think of my grandparents’ photographs. Unposed. Just them, somewhere beautiful. Handwritten postcards. The luxury of a slow afternoon.

That’s what this collection reaches for. Not a European summer exactly—but the American version of that feeling. Summers spent in the places your family returns to year after year. The ones that fill the photo albums, that hold your tears and your laughter, that watch you grow up. The lake house. The coast. The long drive with the windows down.

The greatest luxury, I’ve come to believe, is simply being in the moment. No performance, no documentation. Just there.

And the yellow—I said I’d come back to it. I didn’t choose it because it was predicted to be popular, although it worked out that way. My grandmother has always loved yellow. Her commitment to it, the way it showed up in her wardrobe for as long as I can remember, pulled at me when I started designing. There’s a photograph of her that hasn’t left me, and it’s at the center of this collection.

This collection is what I imagine it feels like to step back in time, to a life where taste is shaped by experience. Not curated. Not performed. Just lived.

I hope when you reach for one of these pieces, now and years from now, it does what the best photographs do. Pulls you straight back into a moment that mattered.

xx,

Brittany Anne

The collection drops in chapters. Chapter One coming 06.22