A pocket tee, a long sleeved tee, and a pair of slouchy utilitarian pants: It’s a uniform beloved of slackers, ravers, construction workers, surfers, normcorers (remember them?!), at one point in my life, me, and now, apparently, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen. The two opening looks of their The Row presentation held in a series of airy rooms in a Paris hôtel particulier riffed on this holy trinity of nonchalant and unaffected style.
Of course, hello, this is The Row: The fabrications might have been treated to look rumpled and crumpled, but you can bet your bottom thousand dollars everything was rendered in the most luxurious materials. Worn with the nifty black ballet slippers that were a recurring feature of this show, the trio was as soft as anything, the vibe, the look, the attitude as casual as a shrug, and looked as comfortable as anything.
If I had a dime for every time someone has talked about quiet luxury these past god knows how many months—years!—and how The Row is invoked as the poster label of it, I could afford to walk into the label’s gorgeous new Paris store and walk out with whatever I wanted. It’s certainly true Mary-Kate and Ashley’s deeply considered and personal approach to fashion has been extremely influential, and for good reason: It connects with so many in a way that fashion isn’t always able to do. But as some of the shows from their imitators—uh, sorry, flatterers—have demonstrated, just doing ‘good’ taste minimalistic clothes doesn’t quite cut it. All too often it crosses the line into an anonymity that verges on the all too anodyne.
Which is why, those two looks aside, this was a collection from The Row which took a different approach to their stock in trade. Yes, there were two coats, one black, one beige, whose quietly sumptuous sense of volume came tightly belted, and an airy white gazar shirt over equally airy black gazar ballooning pants. Yet there was a rawer, perhaps more conceptual and lightly experimental edge at work here too; an embrace of where imperfection could possibly take them.
That meant we were treated to the likes of a gray-brown organza tank, constructed from layers of fabric, over white pants; a gray cocktail dress which looked as though a swathe of raw-edged fabric had been pulled around the body, a black bodice underneath keeping it in place; and a gorgeous black sheath with a panel which fell in a trail from one shoulder.
Occasionally, and to delightful effect, a glimmer of strasse beads would catch the light as the neckline of a plain black dress, or as a necklace with a strict black coat. Other times, a long sleeved dress would be rigorously non-decorative save for its scalloped neckline, or a sublimely sinuous black dress—worn by Eva Herzigova—which twisted across the shoulders and bust. But the most sublime thing about it was that it was worn with the very same spirit as those opening two looks.