Rogues Gallery the ruggedly cool, nautical-inspired label stolen from boyfriends’ closets the world over is finally, by popular demand, offering up a little something for the ladies. By Luke Crisell. Photographed by Heather Catania

Alex Carleton the force behind Rogues Gallery is an extremely unlikely fashion designer. His cliff-top house in Maine is filled with so much sailing paraphernalia anchors, sails, nautical maps, ships’ wheels that, on first impression, it seems more likely to be the residence of a retired pirate than someone responsible for an internationally renowned fashion label. Carleton wears clothes more suited to the occupations of, say, a lumberjack or a park warden. He drives a Volvo. He would rather go to a grubby pub than a posh private club. His dog is normal-sized. He rarely shaves. He is Richie Rich’s antithesis.

Carleton’s is a tale where sailing ships in full rigging cut through choppy waters, eagles cry from lofty aeries, and fisherman huddle around gas stoves in the tiny cabins of their boats as impassable storms rage around them. It is, in short, no place for girls. Yet the essence of this quintessentially masculine narrative, which has come to define Rogues Gallery since its inception five years ago, is woven so naturally through his new women’s line that you would never know Carleton resisted the very concept of a women’s collection right up to the eleventh hour. “Until the last minute I kept thinking about just stopping the women’s project,” he says. “I was concerned it would just be a distraction to the men’s line. But this summer I was travelling in Europe, and I just decided to open up the file of ideas.”

Quite honestly, it’s about time. The collection features the most popular elements of the men’s line dilapidated T-shirts overprinted with enigmatic, esoteric images but also includes fish-print jersey dresses, tailored waistcoats, and tops that are at once basic and, somehow, not. “My favourite women’s clothes tend to not be so overtly girly,” he says, “and that’s what I’ve tried to do with these fits. The pieces are slouchy and the focus is more on a casual, aloof attitude, than it is on a self-conscious, form-fitting showiness”.

The Rogues Gallery girl, it would appear, is as wonderfully idiosyncratic as her male counterpart. Stylish, but understated. Confident, but not arrogant. “She’s not some bleached-out ‘American beauty’ kind of girl,” Carleton says. “This is the girl that is in her basement reading during the summer.” And what does the man whose house contains more books than some small libraries think this girl would be reading? “Emily Dickinson, for sure,” he answers without a moment’s hesitation. “She’s moody, and brooding, and definitely doesn’t run with the pack.”