Trademark – Pre Spring Summer 2016 Ready-To-Wear

Pookie and Louisa Burch’s newish showroom is situated on a mezzanine floor in the gigantic 601 West 26th Street Starrett-Lehigh building. Something about walking down the low-ceilinged corridor to their office conjured memories of Spike Jonze’s brilliant Being John Malkovich and its own low-ceilinged 7 1/2 floor. It’s a fitting association for their Trademark label, which has had an off-kilter sensibility since the start. For Resort, the Burch sisters reined in the idiosyncrasies a bit. Pookie said she’s working to add more stretch to fabrics and lining others, like a potentially itchy Lurex knit, to make them easier to wear. But for the most part, the collection was as pleasantly quirky as usual. Pookie pointed out the Olive Oyl-ishness of a white cotton wrap dress with a deep red ruffle around the neckline, a spot-on reference. Elsewhere, shirts buttoned to the neck, stiff high-rise denim jeans, and Swedish clogs had their own kind of geek chic. The Trademark sensibility, like Ms. Oyl or the Cameron Diaz character in Being John Malkovich, is an acquired taste, to be sure, but Pookie and Louisa are doing a bang-up job of it.