Just One Color

Raf Simons's farewell fall show for the Jil Sander label was a cleansing moment, filled with romantic but restrained car coats and dresses in faint blush tones. Hermès creative director Christophe Lemaire's collections for both spring and fall are dominated by coordinated looks of solid color. This idea is not part of the "take my picture" school of dressing that's popular now, documented by an ever-growing swarm of "street style" photographers and their blogs. Nor is it necessarily for their subjects, celebrated for wearing fruity fascinators, Darth Vader-esque helmets and other traffic-stopping paraphernalia to fashion shows. It seems many designers are feeling that the world of fashion has become more about making an attention-getting statement than a good one. Perhaps, they're saying, it's time to let personal style be a bit more personal.

In Eleanor Dwight's 2011 book about the fashion editor Diana Vreeland, Vogue writer John McMullin said this about the state of fashion in 1932: "The real chic today [is personified] not by the woman who sweeps in wearing a magnificent coat with a fur collar standing above her head, and looking 'like a million dollars,' but by the woman who does not appear to be expensively dressed, yet whose perfection of taste and detail gently permeates your senses." This kind of sneak-up-on-you beautiful clothing is just the type a select group of designers is making now.