The Case for Dressing (Not Too) Ladylike

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“Are we seeing the return of the muff?” My colleague Miguel Enamorado posed the question in Slack. Considering the fluffy, tube-shaped hand warmer appeared in several fall 2024 collections this week in New York, including Batsheva, Prabal Gurung, and Michael Kors, it was a valid question. The muff was popularized in the 1940s and 50s by women of a certain class who spent hours dressing for the day, those who cinched their waists with belts, favored strictly tailored mid-length skirt suits and put on hosiery and hats to go lunch (and I do mean “lunch” as a verb). But this can't be what we're returning to, right?

There’s undeniably some fascination with ladylike dressing swirling in the air right now. Capote’s socialite Swans, the subject of Ryan Murphy’s latest show on FX, played by an astounding cast including Naomi Watts, Chloe Sevigny and Diane Lane, are appointment television. The creation of Christian Dior’s post-war fashion “New Look” and the drama surrounding it is the subject of the latest Apple streamer. It’s on the runways, too, where the best examples look more like, as my editor put it, “Hitchcock heroines an acid,” rather than staid ladies who lunch.

Take the new wardrobe proposed by Tory Burch, who said backstage after her 20th anniversary show that she “wanted to create volume without weight” and make clothes “that really adhere to the body.” Her architectural “lamp shade” dresses achieved exactly that, moving freely with the models’ bodies while retaining the construction of the garment. Burch’s wild tinsel coats were so much more appealing than a plain old evening coat and her take on a mini dress, complete with ruffles that cascaded like pencil shavings, felt unprecious. The scuba tops and A-line skirt pairings were alluringly weird too, as were the tights printed with the word “sublime”, which Burch used to describe her inner appreciation for finding joy in the mundane. Burch also said that while she’s been in this business a long time, she feels like she’s finally found “a more personal expression.” She added, “I wish I’d done it sooner."

Dressing like a lady isn’t about strict codes anymore, nor should it be. At Michael Kors, the designer conveyed this in subtle ways, like pairing a covered-up turtleneck with a transparent lace skirt or layering a hoodie under a skirt suit. Catherine Holstein of Khaite took a slightly more surrealist approach to her usual urban power bitch aesthetic, introducing glossy silk separates crafted to look like they’d been stretched out and scrunched up, some worn with hot transparent evening gloves and without a hint of a smile.

More profound were the discussions that several designers created around gender and age as they relate to dressing. For the last couple of seasons, the brilliantly skilled designer Jackson Wiederhoeft has used his theatrical productions as a vehicle for promoting the democratization of formal attire. Their world is one of pure fashion fantasy and anyone–ladies, tramps, and whoever else in between–is welcome to come and play in it. This season, their mesmerizing crochet dress with a built-in corset was a knockout, as was the mutton-sleeve top with a matching pencil skirt in a black and silvery stripe. This look was worn by a mustachioed model who walked gracefully down the runway like an extra in the Beetlejuice dinner party scene.

Batsheva Hay put on a runway show cast only with models over the age of 40, some recognizable like actress and current swan from Feud Molly Ringwald, and others, women whom Hay simply admires from the worlds of art, dance, and fashion. There were black velvet shift dresses with white lace trim, transparent lace pilgrim collar mid-lenth frocks and poodle skirt silhouettes. Most provocative though was the instarsia sweater that read “Hag” on the front, worn by New York designer Victoria Bartlett with a ruffled collar and a dramatically Victorian ruched and poufed skirt.

If Hay’s aim was to challenge our perceptions of how society believes women over a certain age should dress or act, then at Luar, Raul Lopez’s was to speak to the queer person’s relationship to dressing up. Lopez titled his collection “Deceptionista,” a meditation, he said, on the idea of "metrosexual." In his show notes he wrote about how he used metrosexuality as a way to hide his own sexuality while growing up and that now, “as society embraces a softer masculine aesthetic again, it’s no longer just the metrosexual man doing the deceiving, but it’s society retreating on its own heteronormative programming.” The collection took elegant fashion and turned it all the way out, with exaggerated proportions of Dior’s New Look jacket and skirt pairings, as well as eveningwear crafted with exotic skins and worn with cardigans made to look like they were starched and stretched ten sizes too big.

The Luar lady is fierce and feral, but still friendly. There are no boundaries in Lopez’s universe and because of that, dressing up never feels strict or strained. This is the way forward for ladylike dressing and it’s why he’s leading the charge in teaching us what the future of fashion can be. The days of looking mean and expensive are dying and thank god for that. Smugness doesn’t equate to chicness anymore. It’s no longer about swanning through a restaurant with your muff and it’s not about projecting a sense of power by wearing a blazer thrown over your shoulders. As these designers have proven this week, there is something both aspirational and accessible in embracing the formal and feminine dressing when it is imbued with the weird, the off-kilter, and the not-too-precious.

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