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Elegance has fallen out of style. Not just in the way people dress—with rubber soles and spandex having taken over fashion over the past decade—but, argues Madame Woo of Wooyoungmi, “internally as well.”
Elegance is a state of mind, she said, one she’d like to bring back. But don’t conflate the idea with the current wave of conservatism hitting pop culture and fashion by proxy. While Woo based this collection on ideals of “proper elegance,” her resolve was to merge them with “the younger generation’s more progressive dress codes.” Her primary preoccupation, she said, was delicacy. “I want to highlight two types of elegance through my design,” she explained at a preview, “the internal one”—in reference to the way in which we carry ourselves—“and the external”—the fashion. “I want to renew it and adapt it to the younger generations,” she said.
It’s a timely quest. When Vogue Runway asked a range of experts to predict the direction of menswear earlier this month, all but one agreed that this would be the year in which elegance goes back in style. (The one contrarian argued in favor of the resurgence of a sportswear giant back into market dominance, in case you were wondering.)
Woo hosted her show inside the opulent Hôtel de Maisons, where Karl Lagerfeld used to keep a residence. Most special where her opening looks: A run of meticulously cinched tailored coats and jackets that elongated the body and, as the kids say, “snatched” every waist. This silhouette was then reinterpreted with cropped jackets and cardigans that imitated the effect with a more casual hand. They were most convincing and forward-looking when models appeared to be wearing double pants, the fit of the base layer, often rendered in a pop color or fabric (say, red velvet) cut so lean they translated as girdles. They were fun and had the right amount of contemporary frisson.
If the styling of more casual pieces sometimes complicated the collection’s initial intentions—see a pair of parachute pants with zips down each leg—by the time we arrived at a duo of jewel-toned coats paired with thin scarves (haven’t you heard? They’re back!), Woo had made a convincing case for the art of dressing up.
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