A Proenza Schouler runway review.

There is something very Proenza Schouler about making clothes that look as though somebody has spent an unreasonable amount of time figuring out exactly how they should be put together.

Which, obviously, is the point.

Proenza has always been interested in construction — the stuff underneath the stuff, the way a garment twists, folds, hangs, wraps, gathers, cuts across the body. Not decoration for decoration’s sake. At least that’s the idea.

So naturally, this collection gives us zebra.

Not normal zebra, thankfully. That would be far too easy.

This one is crumpled and abstracted and appears in a cloqué coat, a bias-cut dress, a crochet set and a wrap skirt, which is actually quite clever because the print keeps changing depending on how the fabric is being constructed. It’s less animal print and more what happens if animal print gets a degree in architecture.

And I like that.

Then, later, there is actual leopard print.

Oh.

So now I’m thinking about the whole thing again.

Because the zebra has spent all this time convincing me that the print isn’t really a print, it’s a construction exercise, and then leopard walks in and says, yes, but sometimes a leopard is just a leopard.

Which, honestly, is fine.

Maybe fashion doesn’t need to defend itself all the time.

There is also this lovely recurring thing happening around the waist — knots, wraps, sashes, obi-like belts — which quietly holds everything together. Black dresses, pale blue dresses, eveningwear, sequins. The idea survives even when everything else gets progressively louder.

And that might actually be the cleverest part of the collection.

Because once you start adding leather and sequins and rhinestones and animal prints, things can get very busy very quickly. Suddenly everybody is shouting and nobody is listening.

The sash is the person in the corner saying, calm down.

Colour helps too.

The collection moves from cream, black, yellow and red into sage, powder blue, coral, hot pink, mustard, rust and eventually quite a lot of black. It feels lighter at first and then gradually becomes richer, darker, a little more evening.

Which is when things start getting interesting.

And slightly dangerous.

There is a beautiful rose-photocopy print that keeps returning, moving between dresses, shirts and skirts, and I actually prefer it to the zebra as the collection’s real connective thread. Maybe because it doesn’t need quite so much explaining. It just keeps coming back, quietly insisting that it belongs here.

Then leather starts taking over.

Leather pencil skirts. Leather dresses. Leather draping. Leather sleeves. Leopard leather. Black leather.

But what I like is that it doesn’t really behave like leather is supposed to behave. It isn’t there to make somebody look tough and expensive and vaguely terrifying. It’s being treated almost like jersey or silk — gathered, draped, pulled around the body.

That feels much more Proenza to me.

And then there are the sequins.

Because, well, it’s a runway show.

At some point somebody has to have a sequin.

The evening section gets considerably more glamorous, with sequins, sheer mesh, rhinestones and bare skin all arriving together, and suddenly we’re a long way from the quieter construction exercises at the beginning.

I’m not sure that’s a criticism.

Actually, I’m not sure what I think.

Which is usually when I know something is worth thinking about.

The sheer black mesh blouse scattered with rhinestones, worn over a fringed skirt with the body visible underneath, is beautiful. It is also much more straightforwardly sexy than the earlier pieces. There’s no construction theory required. You see the body. You see the sparkle. You get it.

And perhaps that’s the point.

A runway show cannot spend thirty-five looks asking you to admire the engineering.

Eventually it wants you to WANT something.

The question is whether that makes the collection less interesting or simply more human.

Because there is a strange expectation in fashion that everything has to belong to one perfectly articulated intellectual argument. Every seam has to mean something. Every print has to reference something. Every silhouette has to justify its existence.

Sometimes a woman just wants a great leather skirt.

Honestly, I get it.

The beauty looks are similarly controlled. Slicked-back wet hair throughout, with flashes of cobalt-blue eye makeup appearing more often as the colours and materials get stronger. Nothing is fighting the clothes, which is probably the right decision when the clothes are already doing quite a lot.

And the shoes stay remarkably consistent too — that sharp, slightly curved silhouette appearing again and again while the colours change around it.

So where does that leave us?

I think somewhere between construction and decoration.

The best pieces are the ones where you can’t quite separate the two. The cream-and-black cloqué coat, the pale blue dress pulled together with a single knot, the leather pieces that actually move around the body rather than simply sitting on it — these are the moments when the Proenza idea feels completely intact.

Then there are the pieces that simply want to be gorgeous.

And maybe that’s okay.

Maybe the interesting thing isn’t that Proenza has abandoned construction for glamour. It hasn’t.

It’s that the collection seems to be negotiating with itself.

How much can we decorate before it stops being about construction?

How much can we expose before the clothes become secondary?

How many times can we put leopard somewhere before we’re just putting leopard somewhere?

These are not exactly life-or-death questions.

Thankfully.

But they are the questions that make the collection more interesting than a simple parade of nice clothes.

Because the sash keeps appearing. The wrap keeps returning. The construction is still there, even when the sequins arrive.

And perhaps that’s enough.

I keep coming back to the idea that the collection doesn’t really choose between being clever and being beautiful.

It wants both.

Sometimes it gets the balance exactly right.

Sometimes it gets distracted by the shiny things.

I can’t really blame it.

I probably would too.