Permanent Vacation Moves Through Tension and Release in “Slow Dance”

Built around a quiet push and pull, Permanent Vacation’s latest collection, “Slow Dance,” treats tension not as drama, but as a method—using adjustment, distortion, and asymmetry to shift the body’s relationship to clothing. 

 

Drawstring tops gather at the shoulder and waist, cut-out tanks cinch at the side seams, and softly collapsed tailoring gives familiar shapes a subtle instability. Lightweight cotton tops are pulled through drawstring channels to create controlled disruption in otherwise pared-back silhouettes. Ribbed turtlenecks arrive elongated and lean, while washed denim trades classic indigo for a worn grey cast. Elsewhere, skirts and trousers with drawcord waists and tops that change form depending on how tightly they are tied keep the emphasis on manipulation rather than embellishment.

 

The palette stays similarly restrained. Olive, charcoal, mineral black, washed lavender, and pale checks ground the collection in a muted register, allowing fit and proportion to lead. “I was drawn towards discordant color combinations as the collection unfolded; colours that seemed familiar but were a few shades off,” says creative director Claire Louise Smith. 

 

The collection was designed from “a deeply tender space” following her mother’s terminal cancer diagnosis last March, with “Slow Dance” emerging as the second installment in an unplanned trilogy that also includes Aura and After Rain. The title reflects a tension that takes shape through soft silhouettes, gentle movement, and tactile fabric choices.

 

The campaign sharpens that idea by placing the collection inside narrow corridors and industrial backrooms. Models brace against walls, lean into door frames, or fold into the floor plane, creating a visual dialogue between body, garment, and architecture. “It felt important to document Slow Dance in an environment that was imperfect and untidy, as in life itself, with intimate imagery to convey a sense of vulnerability,” Smith says. 

 

Among the standout pieces, the Enmesh Skirt is the clearest expression of the collection’s point of view. A bias-cut midi skirt designed for everyday wear, it combines pragmatic ease with a blurred checked fabric that creates a hazy optical effect. That tension between clarity and discord runs throughout “Slow Dance,” giving Permanent Vacation another tightly resolved offering shaped by emotion, structure, and control.

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Discover the Slow Dance collection at Permanent Vacation, and keep up with the latest from the brand via Instagram.