September, LA RENTRÉE. How To Cross a Season?
Four brands to carry the color of summer into autumn
I have been thinking about September for a few weeks now -the particular way it arrives, quietly at first, and then all at once insists that the closet change with it. The French have a word for this that I have always loved: la rentrée -the return. Not just to school, or to work, but to structure itself, after a summer of letting go of it. Every year the same question returns with it: do we let the color go, fold the summer things away, and surrender to grey until spring? Or is there a way to walk into autumn without leaving the light behind entirely?
I think every season is beautiful, genuinely — autumn has its own particular magic, the low gold light, the return to structure, the coats. But the transition itself, the actual turning point, is where most wardrobes lose their nerve.
We pack away everything printed, everything bright, everything that felt like joy in July, and we default to black or brown before we have even given September a real chance to be its own season.
This is my answer to that transition: four brands that understand color is not a summer-only permission. Some of these you will already know. Some, I hope, will be new to you. All four know how to carry a piece of summer's spirit into the months that follow — not loudly, not as a costume, but as a genuinely wearable way of refusing to let go of the light all at once.
The Four
FARM Rio
RIO DE JANEIRO · FOUNDED 1997
FARM Rio was born from a small booth in a Rio de Janeiro fashion market in 1997, founded by Katia Barros and Marcelo Bastos with what has always felt like a very simple mission: to color the world one print at a time.
Jungly florals, vivid stripes, hand-drawn fruit motifs — nothing here is trying to be subtle, and that is entirely the point. Each piece is illustrated, embroidered, beaded and embellished by a team of more than forty skilled local artisans.
For September, I reach for their heavier cottons and long-sleeve prints — pieces that hold the same tropical spirit but in a weight that carries you comfortably into the first cool mornings. FARM Rio also plants a tree for every purchase, which feels like exactly the right kind of joy to build a brand around.
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La DoubleJ
MILAN · FOUNDED 2015
J.J. Martin left Los Angeles for Milan more than two decades ago as a fashion journalist and never went home. What she built instead is La DoubleJ — a label that treats maximalism as a philosophy rather than an aesthetic, built on archival prints, kaleidoscope color, and what she calls "piled-on joy."
For September, this is the label I turn to for the pieces that make a transitional outfit feel intentional rather than apologetic — a crisp white blouse, embellished at the collar, worn over one of their exuberantly printed skirts. The restraint up top gives the print below room to speak. This, to me, is the proper rentrée outfit: the back-to-office uniform for anyone who refuses to let structure mean surrendering colour. La DoubleJ does not do quiet. It simply knows exactly where to place it.
A note for later: the homeware — hand-painted plates, gold-trimmed vases, the same joyful print language applied to an entire table setting — is genuinely worth its own conversation. I am already planning a full home and lifestyle article, and La DoubleJ will be very much part of it.
Alémais
SYDNEY · FOUNDED 2020
Lesleigh Jermanus founded Alémais in 2020, and named it for the sense of possibility she wanted the clothes to carry.
The brand's signature is painterly, artist-collaborated prints on vintage-inspired silhouettes — voluminous sleeves, cinched waists, the kind of romantic structure that photographs beautifully and wears even better. Alémais has grown remarkably fast, now stocked in over four hundred stores worldwide including Net-a-Porter, MyTHERESA, Selfridges and Le Bon Marché.
And it has just had its most visible moment yet: Lily Collins will wear the "Johanna" Top on the new season of Emily in Paris, the kind of styling detail that confirms what many of us already knew.
For September, I look to their heavier linens and long-sleeved printed sets — pieces built for warmth without losing an ounce of the artistic, sun-drenched spirit that makes Alémais so distinctly itself, whatever the season.
BYAN
MADRID · SMALL ATELIER, SPAIN
BYAN is the quietest of the four, and the one I suspect fewest of you will already know — which is exactly why it belongs on this list. Founder Andrea Moragues was working as an interior architect in India when an unexpected pause opened an unplanned door: surrounded by markets, color and extraordinary fabric, she began designing her first garments with local tailors.
Three years later, back in Madrid, she turned that experience into BYAN — an homage to classic menswear tailoring, clean cuts and timeless design, produced entirely in small Spanish ateliers with intentionally limited runs.
Where the other three brands lead with color and print, BYAN leads with fabric and cut — the coat you actually reach for every September, the blazer built to be passed down rather than replaced.
There are, of course, other brands worth this same conversation — I could easily fill another edit with names you would recognise and a few you would not. But these four, together, cover the full transition: FARM Rio and Alémais for the print and the joy, La DoubleJ for the maximalist confidence to wear it boldly, and BYAN for the structure that holds everything else together once the temperature actually drops. Start with one. See how September feels different.
"My rule for the transition: one printed piece, one neutral structural piece, worn together. A FARM Rio or Alémais top under a BYAN blazer. A La DoubleJ skirt with a simple white shirt. The proportion changes gradually as the weather does — more structure by October, more colour peeking through underneath. Nothing sudden. Nothing surrendered."
Every season is beautiful — I believe that completely. But the beginning of one is always the hardest moment, the point where we decide too quickly what the next few months will look like, usually by default rather than by choice.
September does not ask you to give anything up. It asks you to carry it differently. These four brands, in their own way, all know how to do exactly that — how to let a piece of summer's colour and spirit walk quietly into autumn, structured, layered, and completely at home in the new season.
Welcome to September. It can be just as colorful as anything that came before it.
P.S. — FARM Rio, La DoubleJ and Alémais all turn up discounted across the usual luxury sites — worth checking and filtering by brand at Net-a-Porter, Mytheresa and Farfetch. BYAN, being small-batch, rarely goes on sale — which tells you something too.
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