Sessun AW10

I have been checking French label Sessùn's website at least twice a week lately in anticipation of their autumn collection. Created by designer Emma Francois as far back as 1995, the label was conceived originally with Latin American influences in mind, but seems to have whittled said influences down in order to concentrate on fantastic material quality and cut. What's more, Sessun is sold in Urban Outfitters and ASOS, and is surprisingly affordable for a label with such a beautiful lookbook.

I definitely have a thing for faded, hazy, beach location lookbooks, as it turns out, and there were many many of them for spring, but this is the first one I have seen for autumn. I admire the atmosphere of it, although it does seem to take centre stage. The clothes, sidelined though they may be, are both simple and complex in their details, patterns, cut and materials.

All images from www.sessun.com

The long-sleeved dress recalls what the high street often forgets – that winters are cold and cardigans tiresome and negates the need for one. My childhood shopping trips with my mother around this time of year were always punctuated by exclamations such as: 'that's far too cold, you'll freeze!' and nowadays my internal shopping monologue is irritatingly similar. Both of them, though (my mother and my monologue) would be satisfied by this dress, and indeed the red coat, reminiscent of rowan berries and cosy-looking enough for snow.

I am drawn to the breton top, which seems almost to be an inverted version of itself, with thicker stripes of dark and thinner stripes of light. Tartan trousers are likely beyond me but those shoes seem to be a great solution to the dilemma of how to wear boots with tapered trousers.

It's a pity that the models' top halves are showcased the most here, as a quick look on the Urban Outftters website is enough to show you that they do some pretty great trousers, such as these ones, here. Also I would love to see what the hemline of the zipped and belted long-sleeved dress looks like, and how they styled it. The upside of this, though, is the exposure that their perfect autumn hairstyles get instead: all achievable twists and bobby-pinned turns, a modern take on 40s hair is the perfect antidote to the vast exposure that the beehive is receiving. All in, a thoroughly French, and thoroughly covetable, lookbook.