Kids these days, they grow up so fast.
Backed by their father Chris of Burch Creative Capital, sisters Alexandra, 29, and Louisa Burch, 25, have launched Trademark, a new line of high-end minimalist separates, conceptualized as the blocks on which to build a wardrobe.
While such pieces do not a typical twentysomething’s closet make, they do comprise the debut collection of the “new American sportswear company,” as Alexandra “Pookie” and Louisa have deemed it.
Neither “high-street” nor “boutique,” the choice of words aspires to position them in the company of Americana retailers, like a Ralph Lauren or perhaps its high-end casual line Club Monaco. The sisters even cite American artists like Josef Albers and Barnett Newman as inspirations.
Evoking crisper versions of a Mark Rothko color field painting, as Messrs. Newman and Albers did, the designers whipped up color-spliced trousers and shirt dresses, while throwing full skirts, nylon jackets and belted trenches into the mix. Summer suits came in navy (a favorite hue, along with Parisian red and white, inspired no doubt by Louisa’s Breton shirt collection)—those were dressed down with leather slides and PVC handbags.
While the brand is firmly based in New York City (and not say, the Hamptons, like their former stepmother Tory’s line), their muse definitely isn’t the all-black-clad model off duty that’s almost a cliche on the streets of Lower Manhattan.
Working out of their headquarters in Chelsea, the Misses Burch are putting the finishing touches on their Grand Street shop before it opens in April, enlisting a young Swede by the name of Andreas Bozarth Fornell, W Magazine reports. The architect’s first few orders of business? Wash the Soho space’s concrete floors a nightingale blue, deck the walls in bird’s eye maple and commission a desk in sheet metal, a la the girls’ other inspiration, the minimalist sculptor Donald Judd.
Click on the slideshow for our selections from Trademark’s Spring and Summer 2014 collections.