Elite Traveler September-October 2015

ASHLEY W. SIMPSON ON FALL FASHION

Delicately playful from Céline

Boho aesthetic at Gucci

Miu Miu draws influences from the 1950s to 1990s

Meanwhile at Miu Miu, whimsy gave way to the bold and peculiar. Miuccia Prada gave us snakeskin accented tweed coats alongside plastic crocodile minis and Princess Di-style 1980s puff-sleeve blouses. The colors were loud – sunburnt oranges, fluorescent yellows and popping teal – and the tweeds came in houndstooth or 1950s plaids, as if straight from your grandfather’s closet. Her girl was just as eccentric as Michele’s woman, cherry-picking influences from the 1950s through to the 1990s. There were occasional nods to the romantic look at Loewe, Maison Margiela and Céline – the latter a real departure from Phoebe Philo’s white box minimalism. Philo went for a look that she described as tattered glamour: satin dresses were slightly frayed, quilted coats had feathered hemlines and fox-printed silk shirts were slightly undone – delicately playful. At Rodarte, Laura and Kate Mulleavy were in the mood for disco. They showed rainbow-sequined dresses, beaded white Victorian lace frocks and sparkling floor-length gowns lined in ostrich feathers. So what was the message across the board? There are many ways to do romantic. You can go down Michele’s rabbit hole for a cinematic ode to your own head-in-the-clouds eccentric; slink into Philo’s transformed bed sheets for a disheveled fairytale evening; go all out on prints and candy-coated colors with Miucca Prada’s vintage-loving Miu Miu collection; or you could create your own style with a playful take on Gucci’s new suiting. After all, if the season’s dreamy, romantic takes on the globetrotting woman suggest anything, it’s that the ultimate fantasy might just be in dressing for all of oneself – and for all of one’s oddities.

The new romantic look was everywhere to be seen on the fall runways. It is a difficult style to capture in words but it belongs to a woman who is a little bit dreamy, a woman who has affection for the lovingly worn-down and off-kilter, and a woman who lives in the peculiar world of her own interior. It was, perhaps, a reaction to decades of in-your- face Tom Ford-Frida Giannini sex appeal. And it was a stark contrast to the spring shows that were filled by populist festival chic (at Dries Van Noten, Chloé and Emilio Pucci) and youth rock essentials (at Heidi Slimant’s Saint Laurent). Yet just one season later, the runways at New York, London, Paris – and Milan, especially – are populated by whimsical, fantasy looks that might have been plucked from the depths of my odd, eccentric aunt’s treasure trove. First came floor-length florals infused with a 1970s-folk feel at Gucci, as well as fur-trimmed loafers, plush velvet pleated skirts and boys in silk blouses accented with ruffled bows tied at the neck. You would be forgiven for thinking this sounds like a vision fromWes Anderson’s next fantastical mini-world – or even a mash-up of the best finds in an estate sale. New Gucci creative director Alessandro Michele came to the house’s helm with a strong, decidedly ethereal bohemian aesthetic, stepping up to take over from Frida Giannini after 12 years of quietly working behind the scenes. Take the Margot Tenenbaum-style mink coats and the androgynous, loose-cut suits accented with oversized bows and layered Fleetwood Mac rings, for instance – the Gucci woman envisioned by Michele is a woman who might choose to look boyish, listens to 1970s folk on vinyl and hunts for the perfect antique dressing stand while chain smoking cloves. She might have her head in the clouds and she’s certainly comfortable sitting alone.

Disco and feathers from Rodarte

Ashley W. Simpson is a fashion writer living in New York City who has written for Vogue, ELLE, V Magazine and Style.com