Style & Fashion

New York Fashion Week gets a bit fancier in its old one-stop home of Lincoln Center. Here you sit on bistro-style wooden chairs, not benches, and the runway is airier, with the light flooding in via the windows facing Lincoln Plaza.

This felt appropriate for Tory Burch’s autumn/winter collection, aimed squarely at the Uptown Girl, or breezy, outdoorsy WASPs keen to pep up their conservative wardrobes just so. Not for nothing was a cover of “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” playing as the models walked, and guests including Vogue’s Anna Wintour and Simon Doonan, Barney’s creative ambassador-at-large (best job title ever, right?) looked on.

Burch herself said that this collection was, in street-style terms, inspired by the café scene in Eric Rohmer’s L’amour l’après-midi, alongside Burch’s childhood love of horse-riding.

Indeed, there was a ghostly sound of hooves, although no signs of flying mud. There were short and chic navy blue jackets and skirts, and also bold jockey-silk patterned tops over jodhpurs, and a rainbow-striped leather dress, followed by a similarly striped jacket. Pants came in tweed, twill, moleskin, and wool.

Track pants from the ‘Tory Sport’ collection were paired with the jockey-silk patterned tops, sometimes livened up by sequins; a gorgeously soft-looking shearling bomber jacket came as weather protection for a cotton polo.

A nylon bomber coat was partnered with a wool turtleneck dress.

Away from the sporty, there was a soft, belted suede dress, a powder-pink trouser suit, contrast-stitched wool coats, and a vivid blue paisley-print silk knit peplum dress.

Other dresses and tops came with horse patterns and prints, and abstract swirls and geometrics, and then—should you be lulled into thinking this was just a collection of smart daywear—out came Burch’s more glamorous evening looks: a diamond-patterned sequin and satin dress, a lamé silk tunic and silk pant, and a horse-print quilted satin bomber jacket.

This was not Fashion Week at its most crazy, eccentric or confrontational, but smart clothing targeted just as smartly—Tory Burch is a label that knows its audience well enough to cater to it, while also gently prodding it to experiment.

It was such a civilized and precisely realized collection, it seemed quite the chaotic comedown to head out into the bucketing Manhattan rain afterward.