This description applies to three garments from Manifold Vintage’s SS2026 collection, which we believe are all from the designer Bill Blass’s final collection at the Bill Blass house. There are three variants: a cream skirt suit with raffia and yarn trim, a cream pantsuit with raffia trim, and a black jacket with raffia trim. The jacket from the Raffia and Yarn Trimmed skirt suit went down the runway.
These three garments are a rare example of a designer revisiting his past collections in his final collection. The raffia trim is reminiscent of a tweed jacket from Blass’s Fall/Winter 1992 Collection. This collection also included a tweed jacket with looped yarn trim.
The Manifold Vintage pieces, all from SS2000, feel simpler by comparison. The jackets are fabricated in a simple crepe of almost uniform texture, the buttons are small, and the resulting pieces are monochromatic. One might say—and we don’t love this language—that the SS2000 jacket speaks more “quietly,” to use the language of the present day. But it feels overly simplistic to say that, at the last show of his career, Blass merely refined what he had done before. And only in comparison to the 1992 variants can a raffia-trimmed suit or jacket be said to speak quietly. We thereby prefer the interpretation that, in lowering chromatic contrast, Blass allowed the wearer to choose how to make these pieces speak. We know the separates were fabricated in cream and black, as we have both versions. The cream jacket was styled with a black bottom on the runway. Some buyers purchased them as contrasting separates. Others purchased sets of one color, like ours.
It is in very good condition. The fabric has worn through in a handful of places, one on the sleeve of the jacket (which is minor but more noticeable because it is unlined and there is only one layer of fabric) and on the pant waist (less noticeable because there are more layers of fabric).
Return policy: Returns accepted within 7 days of receipt for a credit card refund and within 14 days for store credit. Item must have original tags still attached.
