Prior to her short stint at Carven, she was the creative director at Lacoste, known around the world for its singular tiny crocodile motif. With her first collection for that brand circa fall 2019, she injected the French sportswear institution with a kind of elegance that was unfussy and grounded, showing pleated silk dresses underneath oversized cable-knit vests and tailoring that was precise yet unpretentious, often in unexpected colors (and color blocking) and offbeat materials and textures. Her models always wore flats: sneakers, loafers, shower sandals, etc., to signify the practicality inherent to the brand. If the runway styling leaned editorial, the Lacoste stores—or at least the website, which I checked often—reflected the fresh attitude Trotter championed in her shows. This wasn’t a case of selling an unattainable fantasy; what you saw was what you got.
That real-world sensibility is Trotter’s most important trait, honed through the years. She began …