BY CONSTANCE C.R. WHITE
The Row’s Elegant Abstraction
Sisterhood is Powerful
Traditional luxury prided itself.on never screaming. The thought was that it didn’t have to. Luxury today has been redefined in so many ways – for better and worse.
At The Row, the sisters Ashley and Mary Kate Olsen maintain the classic view of luxury as a refined thing of beauty. This season their languid trousers and relaxed tailored jackets skimmed the body like comfortable tailored pajamas. A clarity of form was achieved with luxurious fabrics drenched in layers of similar. tones such as a gray jacket over the gray top over gray trousers.
The jackets and their matching pants brought to mind the roominess of the 1920s zoot suit. Not that they were exaggerated in any way as zoots are, but they were relatively roomy compared with silhouettes seen on several runways this week.
The designers’ confidence in hewing to their own clear vision and not following, in large part, any particular trend is a boon to their brand. You know what the value promise of a Row design is. Simultaneously, they are able to surprise. One can’t predict from season to season just what the representation of minimal luxury will be this time around.
Dresses were present, but rare, with pants taking center stage. Coats are an important ingredient for The Row fall 2020 and they blended seamlessly, in their color, volume, and tailoring, with the rest of the collection. Pristine white was a startling element used head to toe, quite literally. Several outfits had a snug headpiece reminiscent of a balaclava ski hood, to finish the look.
Their handbag is worth noting: A supersized soft pouch that looked like it could hold everything important to a woman from her credit card to her sneakers to her phone to the secret code to press the red button.
The Olsens chose the usual lithesome Gen Y and Z models on which to show the collection. While each brought her own special flavor to the clothes including an inexplicably cast Gigi Hadid, the clothes shone with more incandescence when modeled by veterans like Debra Shaw and Carolyn Murphy who seemed at one with the elegance and impertinence of a collection that dared to be so luxurious and minimal, as if it was demanding that the woman wearing it be seen.
