For spring 2025, Mark Badgley and James Mischka called upon a beloved, oft-referenced fashion muse: Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. But we aren’t talking about Camelot here. The duo behind Badgley Mischka peered beyond the White House and into her marriage to Greek shipping magnate Aristotle Onassis. They were specifically interested in Onassis’s famed yacht, the Christina O, which even informed their venue choice of the Greek restaurant Periyali. (“It looks kind of like the interior of the Christina with the lacquered wood,” Mischka said. “I thought that looked nautical,” Badgley agreed.)
“It takes us from Marbella to Malta to Mykonos,” Mischka said of the collection, an offering filled with brightly colored florals in neoprene, beaded embellishments stitched onto silk mikado, faux wrap dresses, and—of course—many a caftan. “We love caftans,” Badgely said. “We do a lot of caftans, especially for our Middle Eastern customers.”
The pair made a concerted effort to reinvent the cocktail dress this season, in an apparent attempt to appeal to a younger clientele. “Marilyn Monroe says, ‘I just love finding new ways to wear diamonds,’” Mischka said, paraphrasing a line from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. “We want new ways to wear our evening clothes.” One option they presented was a sleeveless tuxedo jacket over tap shorts, printed in a black-and-purple floral scuba fabrication. “It’s fun for a girl that was going to a fresh, young, sexy cocktail party [who] doesn’t wear a cocktail dress,” Badgley said. “This to us is a very modern, feminine tuxedo—comfortable, stylish, classic cocktail.”
But as the saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. While it was a laudable effort to draw in a younger consumer, Badgley Mischka is at its best when it designs for the women who have stayed loyal to it over all these years. Badgley nailed the brief when he gestured to a salmon-hued dress with a sheer, flowing marocain column over a Georgette underlayer: “Easy, glamorous, tall.”
