LL, LLC’s Spring/Summer 2025 collection taps into the spirit of New York’s Midtown with a surreal, irreverent, and humorous bent. A place where business and pleasure converge for many of the city’s industry, Midtown was, and still is, a place where glamour and wealth are thinly separated by seedy unpredictability.

Throughout the collection, iconic masculine and feminine symbols, such as needles, watches, and thick chains, are twisted in scale, function, and material. A dollar sign is taken from a 1980’s corporate desk toy is emblazoned with the phrase, “I worked all this time,” cutting through the iconic symbol with dry humor. A lock motif, taken from a safe deposit box, is transposed into a ring and an earring, gives the illusion of security, but has no key. A dime stud earring appears at first glance as a recreation of a normal US dime, but replaced “In God We Trust” with “Trust No One.” Made within the exact specs of a US dime, it could enter circulation undetected.

Pins and needles, often associated with feminine craft, are recreated as earrings with precariously sharp points, a reminder of mortality and risk for the wearer. What appears at first as a watch is actually the recreation of the reverse side of a men’s watch, emblazoned with the words “pleasure” and “danger” on either side in a flowery script. The words are lifted from 1970s feminist buttons— a nod to LL, LLC’s AW23 collaboration with Martine Rose. Equipped with a quick-release strap, the wearer can choose which side they want visible as a reminder.

Similar to the dollar sign, a cut-up credit card becomes a key chain in shiny yellow brass— called “Bad Credit”— undermines the symbol of wealth by a literal careless diagonal cut down the middle, it’s purchasing power taken away. With each of these pieces, the SS25 collection examines the precarity of power within masculine and feminine tropes with a shrewd eye.

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