Louise Goldin

Louise Goldin is a unique creature: a knitwear designer whose talent really soars in summer. Her imagination literally took off this season as she approached her subject from the point of view of “remote sensors,” i.e., what satellites see when they look down on Earth. “And then,” she said, “I spent hours in scientific libraries researching data and being inspired by graphs, statistics, and high-tech fabrics developed for medicine.”

Even without knowing that backstory, there’s no missing the futuristic energy of Goldin’s complex, body-conscious bodysuits and dresses. Not that there aren’t pitfalls in the endeavor. Shoulders built up in forms that suggested braces or exoskeletons could have swerved dangerously close to Starship Enterprise territory had Goldin not been so in control of her technique and palette. What saved her from that fate were interplays of sheer and solid fabric, an expert meting out of color (in combinations of white and nude, slowly building through ice blues to mauves), and the sense that, for all her imagination, Goldin has a genuine instinct for what a young woman might conceivably choose to put on her body. One idea was the sheer white hosiery-fine bodysuits and cycling shorts, used as a clever base for layering. Asked whether she’d sewn them from some kind of space-age fabric, Goldin laughed. “Of course not. Who do you think I am? It’s all knitted.”