Christopher John Rogers typically holds runway shows once a year, so
this season he was back in his lower Manhattan studio, showing
Collection 16 by appointment. “Looking back, last season we were maybe
looking at a lot of the external expectations, about what people were
expecting from us, and leaning more into evening in a traditional
way,” he said. “This season we looked inward, wanting to reflect
how we’re feeling now and being more explicit about the nuances of the
brand. There’s a lot about how I want people to dress.”

It was indeed a more grounded collection; and not only because the
designer introduced denim this season, with groovy separates
laser-printed in his signature gradient polka dot design. (Seeing the
different takes on this design was one of the highlights this
season—stark in throw-on-and-go knitted dresses; textured-first on a
silver jacquard tank mini-gown; and subtle in sequin and paillette
embellishments on a slip dress.) What looked like a basic cream cotton
shirt dress came alive upon close inspection, with inside-out darts
that turned into pleats, a delicately rolled sleeve that exposed the
seam binding underneath, and a collar constructed to be perpetually
“popped.” Other standouts included a black and white slub jacquard
suit in a slightly slimmer silhouette (“It’s the same suit we did last
season but we just cropped the jacket and shrunk it a little bit”),
and a few pieces in a heavy burnt ochre with contrasting stripes (the
design which vaguely recalled a kind of emergency worker uniform of
some sorts, in a good way). That felt especially right in a high
waist circle skirt style, paired with one of his signature striped
knits, this time a short sleeve top with a sensual deep scoopneck. The
color palette this season, less brilliant but no less bold, was
inspired by the painter Morris Louis.

For evening, a swirling pattern that read as a floral before coming
into focus as “petri-dish” was used on a simple strapless gown with
“umbrella”-inspired panniers made of a nylon taffeta, cut to right
above the ankle. It had such an ease that it would be easy to imagine
the dress daring you to wear it with a little random cardigan and a
pair of simple flip flops to go about your day. (Though a pair of baggy board shorts in the same fabric and print, not shown in the lookbook, would likely scratch that itch just as well.)

The thing about Rogers’s clothes is that for all the glamour they
convey, the magic they conjure, and the psychic space they take up in
the minds of those for whom falling in love with a color or a dramatic
shape is a normal occurrence, they exist out in the real world just the
Same. That’s one drawback of not having a CJR runway show:
seeing all his customers casually wearing his clothes and making them
their own. The fantasy is also the reality.