There is something about this Tory Burch collection that made me want to stop thinking for a minute.

Which, for me, is saying something.

The clothes arrive against this deep teal room with a rusty red floor, and immediately everything feels slightly cinematic — coral, mustard, turquoise, burgundy, pale yellow, little flashes of gold, flowers everywhere, embroidery everywhere, things hanging off the body and around the body and occasionally looking like they might have been picked up on the way to the show.

And then there is the belt.

The belt is everywhere.

Big, round, slightly ridiculous pieces of hardware sitting right at the waist, holding together dresses, skirts, trousers, coats, tailoring… basically anything that Tory Burch could reasonably put a belt on.

At first I thought: okay, this is the gimmick.

Then I realised it wasn’t.

Because the belt is actually doing something.

That’s what I kept coming back to.

There is a difference between putting something on a garment because it looks good and building the garment around the thing that looks good. This collection is interested in that difference, even if it doesn’t always get it completely right.

The floral chenille cardigan is probably the best example.

It appears in different colours, with the same slightly boxy shape and raised flowers, but each time it is paired with something that changes the mood completely. Emerald with teal satin. Grey with mustard. Rust with blue and gold.

It’s the kind of repetition I like because it doesn’t feel like repetition.

It feels like someone found an idea and thought, okay, what else can this do?

And then there is the fringe.

Oh, the fringe.

Sometimes it works beautifully, especially when it is actually built into the garment — stitched into a coat lapel, becoming part of the thing rather than something thrown over it at the last minute.

Other times it feels like someone backstage said, “This needs something.”

And out came the giant feather boa.

I’m not against the boa.

I’m actually very much for the boa.

But I do wonder if it is doing too much of the work that the clothes themselves are already perfectly capable of doing.

That’s the strange thing about this collection. Some of the strongest pieces don’t need anything else.

A crinkled gold dress with almost no decoration is gorgeous precisely because it just sits there and catches the light.

A brown checked coat-dress with the hardware belt feels incredibly composed.

A turquoise coat with satin underneath feels easy in that very particular Tory Burch way — polished, but not precious.

And then suddenly there is a floral cardigan, a giant necklace, a fringe thing, a patterned bag and several different textures happening at once.

Sometimes I love it.

Sometimes I think, okay, we can take one thing off.

But perhaps that’s part of the point.

Tory Burch has spent years being very good at making clothes that are polished, recognisable and incredibly wearable. There has always been that American practicality underneath the fashion — the sense that you could actually leave the show wearing the clothes and go somewhere afterwards.

This season feels more interested in craft.

More interested in surface.

More interested in the pleasure of making something slightly excessive.

And honestly, I don’t hate it.

Actually, I really like it.

There is something quite refreshing about a designer saying: yes, we could make another beautiful coat, but what if we covered it in embroidery and then put feathers on it?

WHY NOT?

The styling helps too.

The black woven flats appear again and again, almost stubbornly refusing to compete with the clothes. The hair is simple, centre-parted and controlled. The makeup barely interferes.

This is smart because the collection already has enough going on.

The shoes don’t need to have a personality.

The clothes have one.

And then, right when you think you’ve figured out the rules, there is the feathered bomber with the purple knit cap and those chartreuse sandals.

Finally.

Someone has broken the rules.

But only once.

And that is why it works.

I think fashion has become very obsessed with consistency lately — the same shoe, the same bag, the same silhouette, the same visual language repeated until you can recognise a brand from three pixels on Instagram.

There is something much more interesting about a collection that has rules but also knows when to break them.

Even the ending seems to understand this.

The final dresses abandon the belt completely.

Soft Grecian draping. Bare shoulders. Pleats. Jersey. The body rather than the hardware becomes the structure.

And I actually like that.

Because after spending most of the collection convincing us that the belt is essential, Tory Burch suddenly says: it isn’t.

And maybe that’s the real point.

A signature is only interesting when you can live without it.

The collection isn’t perfect. Some of the decoration feels more like decoration than construction, and the feather boa occasionally feels like it wandered in from another show. But the best pieces are genuinely convincing — particularly when embroidery, hardware, tailoring and fabric manipulation all become part of the same thought rather than separate attempts to make something look expensive.

What I like most is that Tory Burch doesn’t seem embarrassed by beauty here.

There are flowers.

There is gold.

There are pretty colours.

There are ornate coats and embroidered cardigans and satin and crochet and giant pieces of jewellery.

And none of it seems particularly interested in pretending to be intellectual.

It’s just beautiful.

Sometimes that’s enough.

Maybe especially now.

Because after seasons of fashion trying very hard to be ugly, conceptual, ironic, deconstructed, reconstructed and somehow emotionally unavailable, there is something oddly comforting about seeing a designer make a beautiful coat and then put a ridiculous belt on it.

I don’t know if the collection has completely figured out where decoration ends and construction begins.

But it is asking the right question.

And, for once, I don’t really mind that it hasn’t answered it.

I’d rather see a designer figuring something out in public than pretending they already know everything.

And besides…

the flowers are very pretty.