PH5 Spring 2025 Ready-to-Wear

There are two ways to take in PH5’s spring collection: At face value (colorful and quirky); or really getting into the weeds. The location, the threatened Elizabeth Street Garden, suggested that Wei Lin and Zoe Champion were hoping you’d take the latter option and be inspired to get your hands dirty metaphorically, or in the spoil. The brand is leading by example: the engineered knits are no-waste and, explained Champion, “95% of the collection is recycled or sustainably sourced materials.” In addition, PH5 plants a tree for every garment sold or produced. With a mission of moving people from talk to action on climate change, this was a deliberately purposeful collection.

The idea, which didn’t really come across, was to show the many ways, besides marching, that people can get involved. Paint-throwing extremism makes the news in ways that permaculture and “quiet craftivism—the sewing and knitting circles where people come together to have conversations and spark a moment” do not. Gardening is another option which was suggested by utilitarian trompe l’oeil looks that mimicked a chore apron with flowers in the pockets. Some models carried dried flowers, others sported gardening gloves.

Combining knits and wovens is a fairly new practice for the brand and they really leaned into it for spring 2025, with nylon backed garments, full looks, and best, knits with fabric bubble hems, as in look three.

The brand’s figure enhancing knits were included in the show and there were flowers, landscape, and frog prints as well two tops that need explaining; one that read “Save the Ugly Animals,” and another which looked like it was depicting nipples, but which were actually the eyes of a frog. One of the places Champion has visited is Lake Titicaca in the Andes on the border of Bolivia and Peru, where she spent time with the indigenous Uru people. “They build reed islands,” and have done so since pre-Inca times, said Champion, and “the lake is now threatened by climate change.” As a result, one of its amphibious habitants, popularly known as the scrotum frog, is endangered. It has also appeared, the designer continued, “on a list of the ugliest animals in the world. So this season we want to say, ‘Save the Ugly Animals.’ People always fundraise for polar bears and koalas and penguins, the cute animals.”

Besides the backstory there was a lot going on in this collection in terms of motifs, knit/fabric mixes, different types of stitches, and the odd addition of what looked like crochet raffia. The show format supported the theme better than it did the clothes, which individually were engaging. Polos are having a moment and PH5 had actual and trompe l’oeil versions, but they were often layered under dresses. Overall the line-up felt decorative and various rather than functional and focused. Swimwear might have fit in with the lake theme, and the sporty, tennis-style dress that Lin wore to take her bow was a reminder of the potential PH5 has in the sports category. In fact pieces from the brand’s relaunched PH5+ activewear line were included in the show, but not in a way that called them out. This season was instead dedicated to moving the needle on climate change forward.