Emerging resortwear label The Souv will debut its first ready-to-wear collection on September 12 for the spring 2023 season. Founded by longtime fashion editor Mayte Allende, formerly of WWD and W Magazine, and designer Kevin Nguyen, who cut his teeth at Thakoon, Carolina Herrera and Madewell, the brand proposes a lived-in meets luxe take to resort-spirited loungewear. 

“We found a void within the resortwear category,” Allende said, adding that she and Nguyen met while consulting for a longtime Latest York City brand, the name of which she declined to disclose. “We were each consulting and went to Paris — picking fabrics and prints, dreaming — but the whole lot we liked was a no. There was all the time one other agenda.”

Prior to the pandemic, Allende and Nguyen envisioned their very own line that fused a trendy, resort way of thinking with the practicality of travelwear and the benefit of loungewear — something a bit more masculine, a smidge older, cooler and fewer precious than what currently existed available in the market. The Souv, which the duo initially began two years ago, became a solution to what they saw as a void within the resort category and a results of shared passions — of vintage garments, travel, culture and history. 

“The Souv is inspired by far-flung Eastern cultures, vintage bazaars and artisanal traditions,” they said, adding that the brand name plays off of the thought of traveling and collecting special “souvenirs” along the best way. 

“Kevin would bring back treasures he would find during his travels, which I all the time wanted,” Allende said, adding the brand takes cues from her editorial eye and Puerto Rican roots, in addition to inspiration from Nguyen’s Vietnamese heritage and “worldly vision,” as an avid traveler, photographer and collector of textiles.

As corporations began to reopen post-pandemic, the duo slowly developed their first self-funded collection and partnered with a small, family-owned factory in India to provide it.

“The premise of this collection began from two vintage souvenir scarves that I discovered traveling through the South of France,” Nguyen said. “The worn-in texture and hand-feel, the soft drape, the daring and vibrant colours of the scarves became the starting inspiration for our fabric, prints and silhouettes. Apart from two outerwear pieces, the gathering is created entirely from this fabric based on the headband. I started off with draping and tying these two scarves to create different knots and tie detailing, which is now an integral detail for the brand. All of our knotted pieces began from these two scarves draped in several iterations and forms, and these styles are designed around these scarf drapes.”

The spring look book is comprised of 20 styles with knotted sleeves, tie front details, open backs and handkerchief hems, all of which exude a lived-in feeling through the gathering’s viscose linen fabrication, which was chosen not just for its breathable quality, drape and size fluidity but additionally to maintain the road minimal and simply packable. 

Priced between $125 and $695, spring focuses on two key shapes that draw back from construction and incorporate elastic details and  generous proportions — the caftan and modern interpretations of the Áo dài, which were said to “fuse Nguyen’s heritage with a little bit of Latin flair.” As an example, the Áo dài-inspired shirt dress and shirt highlight the style’s traditional waist-high slits, wide-legged pants and mandarin collar, modernized in vivid floral garden and palm tree prints. 

“I even have trunks filled with vintage Áo dài’s that belonged to my grandmother, and vintage Áo dài’s that I’ve collected from my travels through Vietnam,” Nguyen said. “The gathering and individual pieces are designed with the standard Áo dài in mind — from construction, ease, simplicity and luxury. The gathering features more overt detailing to elements of the Áo dài sprinkled from style to style.”

The gathering’s colours and prints were inspired by photographs from Nguyen’s travels. As an example, a one-shoulder knot dress in fuchsia, inspired by the pink-hued buildings in Jaipur; a palm tree print from the beaches of Da Nang, Vietnam; myriad allover florals of the gardens in Hanoi, Vietnam, and washed brights from the botanical gardens of Costa Rica. To reimagine Nguyen’s photographs, the duo partnered with an Italian print house that can be said to work with Valentino, Prada and La DoubleJ.

“As a lifelong editor, you truly get to know the market and each single brand just like the back of your hand — yet I all the time yearned to launch something from conception,” Allende said. Learning from her prior experience as creative director of the previous label Bande Noir, she’s wanting to have “far more control because it’s just the 2 of us and we truly share a vision.”

To assist with their shared slow and regular approach, Allende enlisted Joann Pucciarelli, a sales strategy veteran from the likes of Theory, Diane von Furstenburg and Rhode Resort, to debut The Souv’s spring collection to the wholesale market, press and public.

“Over the past 10 years, I’ve been working with designers, and although I’ve seen a ton of brands and products when she got here to me, I felt the product, checked out it and thought, ‘Wow, that is different.’ The material and prints are amazing, and it’s easy to wear. It truly doesn’t matter [the] body type since it’s flowy; it enables everyone to wear it, which I actually appreciated in regards to the collection,” Pucciarelli said.

“What we’re doing here is taking a slow approach, which I see as very vital, especially on the time we’re in — to have a look at these boutiques and see where The Souv suits in,” she said. Specialty boutiques and stores within the U.S. — especially in markets resembling Texas, Latest York, South Carolina, California, Tennessee and more — are more likely to be a spotlight through the brand’s market week, which spans from Sept. 12 to 24 and can happen inside a collective space inside a recent, emerging brand showroom, Allende added.

“All of us agree that we would like to work with great boutiques and really service and support the stores that take their probability on us. I do know that the small businesses — like us — who succeed have a really personal approach, they work on attending to know their customer, they get on the road, they spend money and time finding and constructing their community and so they all the time, all the time put the underside line first,” Allende and Nguyen added.