Edun's Saharan Adventure

With the utility trend kicking off this spring—cargo pockets and combat shirts at Chloé, simple lace-up smocks at Céline—it has been a great season for the khaki family. But Edun’s latest pre-fall capsule collection, launched this June to coincide with the World Cup in South Africa, and themed around the idea of a trek through the Sahara, provides ample reasons to keep rocking this sandy color palette through October. The collection for men and women—which marks a relaunch for the brand and the arrival of its new creative director, Sharon Wauchob (a former designer at Louis Vuitton who launched her eponymous line in Paris in 1998)—is all about lightness, with hemp blazers, crumpled linen trousers, slouchy jersey dresses and a seemingly endless range of variations on the cotton parka (one of which comes with ruffles around the neckline to match a series of layered skirts). Alongside the brand’s characteristic use of organic and fair trade fabrics, two T-shirt lines within the collections have a further charitable purpose. The first, Grow to Sew, which is made entirely in Africa, showcases a series of graphic black and white prints, and will be diverting 100 percent of its proceeds towards the Edun-founded Conservation Cotton Initiative in Uganda (read more here). The second has a childlike sense of joy, with designs by the children of Kibera, Kenya, who will similarly receive all sales profits from the line via the town’s Bidii School.