Suno design duo Erin Beatty and Max Osterweis are known for making bright, richly patterned clothing, displaying a vibe Style.com has described as “a kind of offbeat practicality.” All of those elements remain accessible in Suno’s fall 2015 ready-to-wear collection, but we’re also taken in a darker, more more distinctly feminine direction by the designers’ muse, Bertha Mason—the “madwoman” in the attic from Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre, as reimagined by Jean Rhys in her 1966 novel Wide Sargasso Sea.
Jean Rhys, who was herself born in the West Indies, spent nearly two decades breathing life into
“Antoinette,” the young Creole woman who would later become Bertha Mason. Wide Sargasso Sea is a masterpiece of postcolonial literature that shifts the narrative of Jane Eyre, redistributing power back to the dehumanized mass of threatening, exoticized female sexuality who served only as a brief foil to Jane’s trembling white innocence. Antoinette’s descent into madness is written as one extended act of violence by Rochester and, by extension, the British Empire; much like any colonized nation, she is commodified and stripped of her identity, helpless to pick up the fragmented pieces.
In this collection, Beatty and Osterweis construct a fluid exchange between the floral patterns and loose silhouettes of the Caribbean and the dark, formal, masculine shapes of the haute bourgeoise. Black is used consistently, which is unusual for the brand; the color red, a recurring symbol in the book, also plays a large role. This is not the bright, easy Suno of seasons past, and it’s harder to love—but with so many designers, season after season, trotting out vague references to “dualities” and “contradictions,” Suno manages to stand out with this impressively subtle, faithful interpretation of a female identity under fire.