Countless varieties of plastic chainmail slip dresses, camisole tops, pencil skirts, and T-shirt dresses constructed from iridescent daisies, plastic paillettes, or transparent rectangular tabs rustled, shimmered, and clattered their way down the Paco Rabanne runway. One was a mesh of ornate metal 3-D flowers; another had actual dried flowers suspended in resin. But take a look at that last-mentioned skirt: It was worn with the most boringly normal beige cashmere sweatshirt and a pair of low-heeled cowboy boots. In other words, how to work something extraordinary while pretending to be casual about it.
The genius was all in was Julien Dossena‘s layering methods. Instead of leaving all the chain mail as theoretical ’60s space-age showstoppers, he put his through a ’90s filter—those days of grunge and minimalism when the answer to making anything dressed-up work was to layer it over a T-shirt, put it with a white shirt, and stick on a pair of flip-flops.
