Over the summer, Audra enjoyed what might just have been one of its most surprising A-list appearances to date: on Kim Kardashian West. Kardashian West’s brand of skin-baring, second-skin dressing and Audra Danielle Noyes’s decidedly more demure aesthetic, honed at the likes of Lanvin and John Galliano, aren’t a natural coupling at first glance. But Kardashian West looked, it bears noting, damn good in the high-glitz stretch-silk ombré number she sported for a meet and greet back in June.
If Kardashian West telegraphs a certain hyperbolic vision of femininity, then Noyes has, since her label’s inception, focused on a more nuanced view of the female psyche. The tension between fragility and strength in particular is a focus for the designer, writ large in the lush, largely French fabrications (one fil coupe shirtdress springs to mind) and the unfussy, intuitive draping she studied under Alber Elbaz (a ruffled shift, split down the middle in bold black and white was intended as a nod to emotional duality).
Femininity in a light-handed, classic sense is the label’s bread and butter, though, palpable even in Spring’s soft tailoring. Elsewhere, an impressionistic, scrawled floral jacquard felt just right, particularly given the importance of sketching to Noyes’s process, a practice many designers in this day and age have abandoned or outsourced to assistants. One of the best looks of the bunch was a body-skimming midi dress in crisscrossing, midnight blue tinsel jacquard—easy to imagine on more conservative shoppers or Kim K.
