Reminder: Fashion Can (and Should!) Make You Feel Good

I keep hearing the words of Sex and the City’s dearly departed Lexi Fetherston in my head: “Nobody’s fun anymore! Whatever happened to fun?” she yelled before falling to her death. With fashion’s focus on wearability and commerciality, there’s a touch of fashion nonsense missing. Where’s the fun?

Fortunately, there’s nothing like a trip inside Rick Owens’s brain to stoke one’s fashion fantasy. For fall, the designer took the runway inside his home in Paris and staged a personal, emotional show. Owens showed his signature perverse silhouettes and alien-esque shapes but in a sweeter color palette with mint green and cream and rendered in softer textures like mohair and shearling. Owens succeeds once again in creating fashion that achieves what any art form sets out to do: to make us think about the medium, in this case, clothes–even something as simple draped jersey top–in a radically different way.

Meanwhile, at Chloé, Chemena Kamali’s debut collection managed to strike a chord that was at once nostalgic–a call back to the early 2000s and the boho-chic era of oversized banana bags and peasant ruffled blouses that Chloé defined–and utterly of the moment. Above all, it just looked cool. It takes a lot of confidence to wear chiffon genie pants layered underneath leather fringed capris, but she may just inspire it.

Another designer who helped define what we’ve come to think of as early oughts style is Isabel Marant. This year marks three decades since the French designer launched her eponymous label and on Thursday night, she staged a fall runway show to ring in the big anniversary. Marant has always evolved, though, consistently delivering collections that convey the kind of Parisian effortlessness everyone always seems to be after. This season, Marant revisited some of her now-classic styles–oversized cropped jackets, fringed boots, and textured or embellished pants–but with twists and tweaks that hit all the right notes. Her outerwear was particularly noteworthy, namely the Southwest-style fringed jackets and a balloon-shaped shawl collar puffer.

It’s always a good sign when, after nearly a month of the fashion circuit, showgoers crack a smile. It happened at Marant and it also happened at Rabanne. Julien Dossena titled his fall collection “Patterns of Attraction” and wrote that it was about “an indescribable longing for everyday originality.” Yes, he used the buzzword “everyday” but this offering was far from banal. It was about the ways in which we experiment with, change up, and layer on personal styles. Dossena mashed up punk and grunge and vintage magpie vibes, which was manifested in plaid pants and shirts layered under fuzzy cardigans and menswear-inspired overcoats. Embellished tights were paired with beaded minis and big old blazers, while knits took on a free-spirited quality with fringe and intarsia details. It was the antithesis of one-note.

Daniel Roseberry has had a lot of success with Schiaparelli, particularly when it comes to creating memorable looks for the red carpet; often they are versions of his couture designs. Backstage after his fall show, he noted that this was about defining ready-to-wear on its own terms. “The biggest priority was taking it away from the couture and defining it on its own,” he said after the show. “We’re trying to grow things past couture and VIP so when people close their eyes, I want them to see something beyond celebrity and all of that stuff.”

Scored to a soundtrack that included Janet and Michael Jackson songs, the runway show featured models wearing furiously fun outerwear and separates, like a cropped puffy bomber jacket with gold hardware and a baggy, slightly wrinkled denim suit and shirt fastened with a tie made from a fake braided ponytail. Roseberry designed a range of dress silhouettes that featured easy draping and fluid fabrics; it was a loosening-up of his Schiaparelli world, but not a departure from it. The feeling you came away with was that these clothes (and by extension, their lucky wearers) are self-assured and smart.

I asked Roseberry what he thought of all the conversations lately around “real clothes” and “wearability” in fashion, to which he replied deadpan, “I think that’s what people do when their business is in the shit, and ours is the opposite.” And that’s the kind of energy (and honesty) we need more of in fashion.

You Might Also Like

• 4 Investment-Worthy Skincare Finds From Sephora

• The 17 Best Retinol Creams Worth Adding to Your Skin Care Routine