If you’ve ever rifled through your mother’s closet as a kid, you’re probably familiar with the feeling a blazer would evoke.
Fastidiously tailored, sleek, and nipped at the waist, blazers defined adult dressing – perhaps more so than any other wardrobe workhorse. For me, it meant being a grown-up. Wearing a well-fitted blazer meant you were nonchalant, self-possessed, gracefully competent. It required a different kind of courage than, say, slipping into a dress or a t-shirt. It projected fearlessness. You couldn’t fake your age into a blazer, no. You had to earn it by waiting your turn.
I know I’m not alone in recognizing this fabric of memory when it comes to the sartorial world and connecting it with a parent or perhaps even a grandparent. Case in point: In journeying through her mother’s and grandmother’s closets, YOMI’s designer Fanny Van de Wijngaert found inspiration in this tried-and-tested uniform. “Growing up, I remember my mother wearing blazers so often,” Fanny told me in an email interview. “She gave me so many of hers when I was younger that the majority of my blazer wardrobe was made of hers. It almost felt like her uniform, her second skin.”
After several years of dabbling in law, the idea of pivoting into a fashion career began tugging at her arm. She made a leap; she left law, soaked up what she could about the industry, and then turned her dream job into reality. Along with her husband Dimitri, she launched her brand in her hometown of Brussels, Belgium, later moving to London, where they now spearhead YOMI’s operations. Focusing on the “mystère féminin,” she unapologetically zeroed in on the suit – and little else. “I knew this is where I would begin,” she wrote. “They have always been in my life.”