Edith Bouvier Beale—better known as Little Edie—is a pop cultural icon for good reason. Wrapped in a tight headscarf and lashings of fox fur, the late model and socialite, first cousin of Jackie O, and—above all—tragic protagonist of 1975 documentary Grey Gardens is an emblem of a stoic blue-bloodedness in spite of circumstance. The sort of person who’d rather sit in a damp-infested cold stone manor swaddled in her ancestral pelts than sell them to pay the heating bill.
Feben, the London-based designer, is not necessarily someone who can relate with Little Edie on the level of direct lived experience—the hard times she has experienced are not, for example, the result of frittered family fortune, but rather of the punitive bureaucratic and sociopolitical circumstances that befall many first generation migrants from the Global South to the Global North. Still, when she saw the film that turned Little Edie into the cult figure she now is, she felt a strong degree of relatability.
“I really found myself drawn to the strength of her mood,” the designer demurred. “She’s a rebel in her own right, and there’s a really staunch quality to her personality.” Staunch, in fact, is the name of the collection that Feben offers this season, and, befitting its title, it’s easily her most committed and accomplished body of work to date.
Drawing on Edie’s kitsch-y commitment to uncompromising glamour while it’s all falling apart, a sleeved A-line tea dress comes with an asymmetrical drape of crystal-strewn faux fur, with the material also used for a hulking keyhole silhouette dress. Impeccable tailoring in marigold satin features princess seam detailing on the reverse, delivering a cinch that exudes an air of debonair composure, while a purple satin cocktail dress and a gingham jersey gown features knotted cut-outs at the midriff, as if tacked together while it’s all coming undone.
These pieces were savvily executed, and decidedly chic, with a hint of edge to counterpose any potential readings of stuffiness. For longstanding fans of the brand though, the most exciting looks will be those that dig deep into Feben’s accumulating archive, like the checkered yellow dress featuring a curvy trompe l’oeil damask slip gown down the front. It’s a conscious nod to the designer’s Central Saint Martins’ graduate collection, in which she printed the nude figure of Nina Simone on a stretch mesh dress in a confrontation against contemporary Western fashion’s inability to accommodate, let alone celebrate, Black women’s bodies. Granted, the commentary here was not quite so obvious or charged, but it’s spiriting to see Feben find ways of integrating that messaging within such a commercially promising collection with an IYKYK wink.
