Local designer creates silky solutions for fashionable nomads.
The inspiration for Sausalito designer Jasmine Hamed's on-demand fashion line, Très Nomad, may initially have been her frustration with off-the-rack maxi dresses and wide-leg pants never fitting her slim, almost-6- foot frame. As the concept began to take shape, it became clear that her solution to ill-fitting clothes was also an antidote to fast fashion and (some of) its environmental consequences.
Enter the era of “seasonless” clothing: “Fast-fashion retailers will stock new looks every week. That’s potentially 52 seasons of new styles,” says Hamed, a native of the Netherlands, who worked for 20 years as a wardrobe stylist for such clients as Vogue and Nike before taking fashion into her own hands. “Très Nomad is slow fashion— our styles are available all year long and made to order. We have no inventory, and, yet, all our pieces are always available.”
Très Nomad is also devoted to just one fabric, a flowy silk charmeuse that suits the label’s effortless, gypset style and ticks all of the easy wear-and-care boxes: The clothes, ordered online and made to measure, take up minimal suitcase space—a top consideration for nomads everywhere. The cool textile is weighty enough for warmth, and especially elegant under such San Francisco staples as a wool coat or cashmere cardigan. Color also takes well to the fiber—any of the 50 pieces in the Très Nomad collection can be dyed in any one of 43 colors, from aubergine to chartreuse to Marrakech Rose (actually, overdyeing for richer hues is standard procedure at the Sausalito atelier). The fabric is machine-washable and the inevitable wrinkles smoothen by merely hanging the garment in a steamy bathroom. Lastly, silk is sustainable, requiring a tiny fraction of the water that cotton needs to be produced.
“Silk has a reputation of being so precious, but it is actually very hardy and strong,” says Hamed, 40. “It’s just what you want in a travel companion.”
Photography by: CAYDIE MCCUMBER
