Like many designers, Batsheva Hay is feeling the pull of a certain kind of nostalgia, but unlike others who may be doing it with the purpose of chasing clicks, for Hay the nostalgia appeared unexpectedly. “My mom is an artist, and she always wore these huge sack dresses, like smocks, and I think a lot of my identity was a rebellion from that—being very nipped in at the waist and over-the-top and almost kind of ‘look at me!,’ because there was something about her where she kind of erased herself for her work,” she said on a recent afternoon inside her NoLIta flagship. “Recently, she was wearing one of her big sack dresses and I asked her if I could try it on, and she gave me the dress off her back. And I tried it on and I was like, ‘wow I feel cool in this.’”
Not that the square silhouette is entirely new for the designer—she’s been working with it since fall 2024 when she first collaborated with the dancers from the Isadora Duncan Dance Foundation & Company who said it was their favorite shape for movement. The difference is that Hay has wholly given herself to it. A smock dress in green silk was almost an exact copy of the one favored by her mother—she added the ’50s influenced neckline—while others were embellished with her signature curtain-ruffle shape at the hem. There were long sacks and short sacks, though the best of her experiments was certainly a patchworked version with sleeves that can snap off; which opens an exciting possibility of customization. “This is the kind of stuff that you see on a hanger and it looks terrible, but then on the body, it has so much energy,” she said, pulling the neckline of her own dress, a tie-dyed T-shirt dress with safety-pin patchwork detail that is also part of the collection, off her shoulder.
Some of her classic pieces remain: little button-down blouses, ruffled capri pants, and versions in black and cream of her original silk taffeta dress because “people keep asking for them and we keep selling them.” She once again modeled the collection for the lookbook, but it is a fact that she is her own “muse,” a kind of authenticity that goes a long way. Who else could make a semi-sheer floral Victorian shirt and purple sequined bicycle shorts look so damn cool and desirable?
“I’ve thought about it, and I really do make things that I want to wear with the truly risk-averse belief that if people don’t want it, I will wear it,” she added. “And that’s it. That’s what I’ll keep on doing.”