Vera Wang read The Handmaid’s Tale over the summer and started watching the TV show. Ofglen and her fellow handmaids’ bonnets appear in the collection video and lookbook she produced this season—only Wang’s aren’t white, they’re black. Margaret Atwood’s dystopian depiction of a totalitarian United States struck a nerve with Wang, as it has done for so many. “The loss of any personal freedom, the fear of retribution, the cruelty of forcing women to be so stratified and categorized, and most of all having to obliterate their pasts and their identities is something so profoundly troubling,” Wang said in a statement. “For the collection,” she continued, “control ultimately begets self-expression.” Ofglen carved Nolite te bastardes carborundorum on her closet wall. For Spring, Wang customized her tailoring by exposing bras under jackets that peeled off the shoulder and adding corsetry seaming to others—or even garter belts. Ironically enough, all that self-expression put her at the center of things (which is not a bad place to be); the corset is shaping up to be the accessory of the season.
Tailoring has been a preoccupation of Wang’s recently. Accoutrements aside, the bridal dressmaker made a case for her suits, which came in a Balenciaga-ish check in both wool and printed silk. The silk version was a clever idea because it will give her customer the pulled-together look of tailoring with the potential ease and comfort of a dress. That having-it-both-ways concept extended to other pieces in the collection, including the dress in white or black that combined a boxy men’s cotton shirt on top with a skirt of luminous bias-cut silk satin below. Because of the lingerie details here, the line between day and night was blurred. Wang likes the nebulous areas, so she mixed things up just as much for after dark. Metallic paillettes met more of that wool plaid, and a button-down dickey accessorized a long Victorian-ish white dress. It was unaccountably compelling.
