The Urban Cowboy

Israel’s fashion scene may not have been thriving when Nili Lotan was growing up, but that didn’t stop her from dreaming of designers like Yves Saint Laurent, or hunting down copies of ELLE and Vogue for inspiration. Her passion was in part thanks to her mother: a textile designer who instilled a lifelong appreciation for art and beauty in her daughter. When Lotan was 20, after she’d spent two years of mandatory service in the Israeli army, her mother encouraged her to attend the newly-opened Shenkar College of Engineering, Design and Art – by then, Lotan was an expert at expressing herself sartorially. “I quickly realized that it’s more about style than fashion trends,” she says. “That a woman really needs to understand and get familiar with herself, her body and who she is, and then develop her own style.”

Lotan started her eponymous label in 2004, after 23 years of working for designers including Liz Claiborne and Ralph Lauren in New York. “It’s minimal, effortless, timeless,” she says of her signature aesthetic, “and while it’s kind of nonchalant, it’s also elegant and luxurious. I think I manage to do one not at the expense of the other.” It’s also a canny mix of masculine and feminine, echoing Lotan’s own personal tastes. “As a teenager, I was a tomboy – that was my aesthetic,” she says. “Then, as I grew up and became a mother and a designer, I started to bring a little bit more femininity and sexiness into my clothes. So it has a soft and hard edge at the same time.”

The ’70s, her favorite era, constantly crops up on her mood boards, along with some of its most inspiring and game-changing women, like Patti Smith and Bianca Jagger. Ultimately, though, Lotan designs with herself in mind, tuning in season after season to the gaps in her wardrobe, which is why her label has really struck a chord with busy, stylish women around the world. “What’s interesting is that the collections are ageless,” notes Lotan. “I can be so much older than my clients or younger than them; age is meaningless. We are all independent women, professionals with all the obligations that come with that.” The fact that the clothes have had to work in Lotan’s own day-to-day life meant that she needed them to be practical as well as stylish; she thinks as much about comfort and whether things will travel well as she does about beauty.

These days, Lotan divides her time between New York and Tel Aviv; the attitude of her label is a perfectly pitched blend of the two cities. “Living in Israel brings all that effortless nonchalance, that feeling of not trying,” she says. “New York brings the sophistication, elegance and luxuriousness.” It was the US, though, that sparked her imagination for the Resort ’19 collection. Western-inspired, it’s a masculine-meets-feminine mix peppered with Midnight Cowboy-inspired details, from the slouchy white boots to the fringed suede jackets and denim. “As a designer, Americana has always been a part of my vocabulary,” Lotan says. “It’s one of the things that drew me to the culture of America when I came here, the whole cowboy element of Clint Eastwood – the hat, the belt, all the way down to the boots – that I find very sexy and attractive. So, I wanted to create a very minimal and modern look and way of dressing with a Western feel to it.” And isn’t that exactly how we want to dress now?