All images by Monica Shulman

For the debut of her new line, Study, at The Green Shows, Brooklyn-based designer Tara St. James showed nine beautiful looks in softly ballooned and draped shapes, using a muted palette and a surprising central concept: squares. “I wanted to impose a restriction on myself,” St. James said of the season’s inspiration. “The whole project is made of squares (ranging from one through nine), and each piece is made of a different number of squares. It’s sort of not obvious right away, but as the collection goes along, it’s one square folded or two squares folded, etc.”

For the collection, entitled The Square Project, St. James said she chose a limited color palette to keep the looks, ranging from a halter dress with a decorative rope tie to a voluminous, short shirtdress, “as simple and clean as possible.” The crisp looks also made it easy to forget that pieces were all made with environmentally-friendly materials.

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