The Quiet STORM

Fashion's obsession with a SOFTER and more UNDERSTATED-but no less LOFTY-brand of luxury is in FULL FORCE for FALL

- ALISON S. COHN

CHIARA FERRAGNI looked like she had activated incognito mode. At Fashion Week this past February, the Italian style star, who has amassed an Instagram following of 29 million for her sparkly, rainbow-colored, and logo-heavy ensembles, wore only neutrals: a cream knit and cargo pants at Fendi, a white shirtdress under a beige coat at Tod's, gray suiting at Gucci.

Among the über-influencers at the shows, Ferragni wasn't alone in pivoting to more pared-down looks. Tamu McPherson wore white knitwear at Ferragamo. Camille Charrière turned up in gray cashmere separates at Prada. Caroline Daur and Chriselle Lim donned classic camel outerwear at Max Mara and Lanvin, respectively. This, apparently, is what street style looks like in the quiet-luxury era, when aggressive refinement and sumptuous fabrics reign supreme.

"Getting back in the flow of the fashion calendar is very demanding," says McPherson, founder of the fashion, beauty, and wellness site All the Pretty Birds. "Currently, I am gravitating toward pieces that you and I have probably seen over and over again, which are classics." What McPherson is yearning for now is a fail-safe uniform of sorts-clothes that will gird her against the uncertainty of our hazy and not-quite-post-pandemic world. This, she says, requires a form of fashion reeducation in the most fundamental elements of style, which is precisely what the Fall 2023 runways offered: "These are go-tos that you can wear and use all the time. And so I do think that commercially it's a great strategy."

If the collections over the past few were brige mood-boosting infusions of color and shimmer-clothes conceived for a once-aspirational vision of a Covid-free future of revenge partying-then designers have turned just as determinedly toward understatement for fall, with an emphasis on the finer points of quality and design.