After the subdued wash of dawn colors that opened the show—soft grays, pinks, and ivories—Philo added a dash of moody peridot green, inky blue, and earth brown inspired by the palette of the Flemish fourteenth-century painters. The only prints were essentially wovens—mimicking the plaids of those mundane hardware-store nylon hold-all bags, reinterpreted in precious woven silk gauzes.
The jewelry was equally minimal; necks and wrists were lassoed with a thread of gold, embellished with just a dark wooden bead, smooth as a beach pebble. And the softly crushable purses were the acme of understatement. Stripped of all hardware they became an extension of the clothing (and were often shown in the same fabric or color, camouflaged against the body), perhaps twisted into a trapezoid shape, or slashed so that the hand could be slotted through to clutch it tight: Pitch-perfect, like the clothes they were shown with, and the very essence of desire.