What’s next for Eckhaus Latta after their breakthrough year?

Mike Eckhaus and Zoe Latta were both fired three times this week. By each other. “It’s our little joke,” says Latta, one half of the duo behind Eckhaus Latta, the brand with art-school inclinations and downtown street cred.

Firings aside, there’s no question that the brand is at some sort of precipice. Last year was a banner one, which included their being named finalists for the LVMH Prize and the unveiling of their art installation-cum-pop-up at the Whitney Museum in New York City. They also opened a New York store, which joins their 2016 Los Angeles outpost (in a rather unconventional set-up, Latta is based in LA and Eckhaus in New York). All that plus two stellar collections, well received by retailers, and a dedicated global following of fans of their avant-garde, deconstructed aesthetic. Eight years in and they seem to be firing on all cylinders. But, of course, fashion is fickle and the duo aren’t patting themselves on the back quite yet. After all, there is work to do.

Vogue meets the duo ahead of their AW19 show, between fittings in a small, third-floor, walk-up studio in Chinatown. Model Paloma Elsesser is trying on an intarsia-knit patchwork crop top and skirt combo that emits the sort of underground, funky-cool energy that has become the duo’s signature aesthetic. Around her, samples are being altered and model castings are taking place.

This season is perhaps more important than previous collections. The bar has been raised and the duo need to introduce more sophisticated ideas and execution without alienating those who were attracted to the label’s lo-fi allure in the first place. “We feel like we’ve been at it for a while now,” explains Eckhaus, “and we’re in the tricky space where we’re not young and new anymore, but we’re definitely still in this emerging category.” Latta adds: “We used to make this joke that Eckhaus Latta was our kid, and now it feels like a teenager. It’s making its own decisions and sorting itself out. It’s not some young new thing.”

But the silhouettes and shapes of AW19 do feel new: more structured, edging their way into tailoring, careful to explore that category in a way that feels like a step forward, but also keeping in line with the very particular world that they’ve cultivated so well—artsy but unpretentious, stylish yet rumpled, a sort of self-consciously awkward allure suffused with a sly sense of humour.

“We’re playing with it,” says Eckhaus, wearing a black T-shirt with a hole in it, tucked into jeans that appear acid-washed. He pulls out a navy drop-shoulder jacket with a modified Juliet sleeve and white contrast stitching. This, he says, encapsulates this season’s mood. An off-white, Victorian-looking blouse with tulle inlay and internal straps is another favourite. “We’re really getting into the interior of the garments,” he says. “That inward-out sense of things, the know-how of stuff. It’s time.”

That things have a certain grown-up allure will come as no surprise to some and a shock to others. “As we gained more confidence in the work we’re doing, as we progress and understand what we’re making in a more in-depth way, we want to explore and push ourselves,” says Eckhaus. Their designs have more polish and finesse because they themselves feel more able to deliver that sort of result.

“When we first started, there was a lot that was very novice because Zoe and I had absolutely no training,” offers Eckhaus with a chuckle and grimace. The pair met and started the brand, more like an art project than a fashion label, in 2011, at the Rhode Island School of Design, where he had trained as a sculptor and she in textiles. If things in those early seasons had an unfinished quality, sometimes it was because, well, they were unfinished. “Now things should feel and have a language,” says Eckhaus.

And while they’re working on developing that language, they’re also dealing with the day-to-day reality of production, store deliveries, revenues and profits—“All those amazing spreadsheets we get to do,” Eckhaus jokes. Garments, like a silvery bodice in a tapestry print with a hip peplum or a series of dark floral knits that appear to be dripping down the body, are intriguing examples of how their idiosyncratic vision is moving in a more urbane and worldly direction—and nowhere is that more evident in the collection than in eveningwear.

The idea for approaching this category came from the simple fact that, these days, they’re being invited to more formal events—not to mention, as they enter their thirties, the wedding invites that are piling up. As its creators grow and evolve, so too must the brand—but their eveningwear is nonetheless done in a distinctly Eckhausian way—in boxy baby-doll dresses or lean, body-hugging knits. Nothing ever seems fussy and the dresses possess the same offhanded nonchalance as the brand’s popular denim and tees.

There’s a high-profile collaboration hitting the runway, too. “At first we were like, Woah, how could this work?’” says Latta of teaming up with Ugg. “This is like two worlds colliding. But it seemed like an awesome opportunity to think of their products as something that came from a casual place and have now inserted themselves into fashion. Parts of our brand can do that too.”

Their versions come in clunky Frankenstein-esque, square-toed boots, fur-lined mules, which have a silly-sexy energy, and chunky booties. Latta, who lives in LA and is a vegetarian, felt especially connected to Ugg thanks to its status as a California-based heritage brand; its shearlings are byproducts from the meat industry. Beyond the shoes, they also made woolly shearling jackets – one shaggy coat with purple “frosted tips” is based, in part, on Justin Timberlake.

Next on the agenda is a little break—which is, of course, relative. Their schedule may appear slower this year because they haven’t taken on as many outside projects, but there’s still plenty of work to be done. As for their 10-year plan? “We’re very superstitious,” says Latta. “We love to under-project,” adds Eckhaus, laughing. “We’re always so nervous about that stuff… We graduated from college right after the recession, [so we] always have this sense of reality, of being realistic about things.”

As for their art-world associations, where does one go after a partnership with the Whitney, one of New York’s mightiest institutions? And where do they think their work sits in relationship to the worlds of art and commerce? “We used the Whitney show to work through a lot of those questions in a very public way,” reflects Latta. “We didn’t really provide the answer, which is how we often work.” In a world filled with black-and-white answers, it’s this dedication to ambiguity, in the ability to leave things unresolved, that the brand can find its strongest statement.

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