From a French seam to mining a seam of spare elegance good enough to stand up to be being shown in France. That’s what went through the mind Sunday at The Row’s intimate appointment-only presentation at a hôtel particulier on the Rue de l’Universite on the Left Bank in Paris. It’s unlikely anyone would have ever imagined, least of all the two sisters behind the label, that The Row would come this far. Back when Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen launched the label in 2007, they began by turning out carefully wrought French-seamed T-shirt dressing. From there, they developed it into a collection that covers every aspect of what a woman could possibly want to wear: ineffably cool leather jackets, androgynous shirts, louche tuxedo jackets, trousers made by traditional tailoring methods so that they retain something of their menswear origins, and leggings cleverly constructed with that most miraculous design—they never sagged or drooped.
Since then, The Row has become the source of basics that are so well-crafted they defy that very description. And because the Olsens themselves are such perceptive, avid, and canny consumers of fashion, they have a keen eye as to how to make the proportions of their clothes simultaneously connected to the moment and yet somehow also timeless. More surprising is how everywoman the two sisters have made the label, given how original and idiosyncratic their personal style is. Who’d have thought that they would have taken on the more problematic, and prosaic, issues of designing for women? But they have, and perhaps they’ve worked so assiduously so that they'd never be tagged with that dreaded appellation "celebrity designers." They’ve certainly demonstrated a knack for turning out more than a few pieces that are non-ageist and non-sizeist, and can be personalized and worn every which way.
There is definitely plenty of that for spring, on the strength of the fifteen looks they showed—while also managing to brilliantly distill the general cut and thrust of the season ahead. They switched from a sinuous dress created out of two pieces of bias-cut ivory satin-back crepe, to an exquisite shell-pink silk tie-front shirt worn with a matching chiffon skirt whose cut spiraled around the body, to a smoking jacket the color of pale pinky-beige LeClerc base powder, to a dusky pink silk dévoré slip that rippled and clung and undulated in all the right (and most flattering) ways. Can we just say that in a season where so many designers showed yards and yards of sheer expose-every-single-part-of-your-body chiffon, these two were among the very, very few who thought a lining might be a good idea? Or to give a long skirt (they’re feeling for them too, like almost everyone else; they’ve certainly worn a few in their time) a zipper at the split, so that the depth of the reveal can be controlled? It’s in those small, thoughtful gestures that you can gauge how good their clothes are. And this collection was chock-full of really, really good clothes.
