Lady Sovereign

The disadvantage of going on a self-imposed web detox is this—catching up feels like trying to hold on to a swiftly unraveling thread of an epic fashion story.

More so at the onset of International Fashion Week (London Fashion Week Spring/Summer 2011 as this goes to print) — updates filter in like waves crashing on waves. And if it catches me going through the motions in the real world, consuming real time, connecting to the all-powerful server at the end of the day is like starting the race with the disadvantage of being haggardly last.

I wanted to do some sort of transition of style from Fall/Winter to Spring/Summer, but since Fashion Week ends in Paris, and that’s still about two weeks from now, that leaves me with only about one fourth of directional readjustments to break down and anatomize. So I go to the next best thing — what the editors are wearing.

Thanks to Tommy Ton, Scott Schuman, and Garance Dore, never have fashion insiders been more democratized, scrutinized, and recognized, turning these otherwise familiar names on staff boxes into devoted studies of sartorial learnings. More than celebrities on red carpets, editors and fashion week personalities have their aesthetic parameters defined and covered. Which is so rare, really, that once recognized, iconic cult status is imminent.

So in the name of everything Supreme — its our third year, yay!—here are the ladies that reign in my oligarchy, with pairings and reworked matchings fresh off the New York Fashion Week pedestrian ramp. (Well, except for Vika.). I can’t wait for the condensed version from all the designer capitals at month’s end. But until then, this will do.

Carine Roitfeld

Paris Vogue’s chief editrix Carine Roitfeld keeps her aesthetics, as she calls it, “simple and lean,” which fits nicely in this season of the restrained everything. Her sartorial leanings always include statement coats, tailored pieces and a distinctively angular thrown-together linearity. With her signature smudge-eyed smokiness and parted bronze tresses, she is Parisian chic epitomized. She comes armed this season with a dizzying array of outerwear ammo and a sort of African-slash-safari sensibility, what with a luxe Python skin trench from Emilio Pucci, a Cheetah patterned long line overcoat and utilitarian-inspired pieces in desert nudes and military greens. Leading the style army in peep toe, knee-high lace-ups, she juxtaposes fierce dominatrix with her effortlessly sleek femininity. At 56, Carine still has the enviable lithe frame endowed on only a few. (I’m jealous, honestly.) That and a defined sense of style confidence — she admittedly makes known that her clothes are well chosen but few, and she recycles footwear — makes her one of the most closely-watched front row denizens, not to mention dissected and copied.

Kate Lanphear

Blondes have more fun. Take it from me. After two weeks of going under the peroxide cap, it’s safe to say that this newfound, albeit long-mulled, coiffure has gotten its share of excited greetings, and comparisons to US Elle’s style editor — and my sartorial soulmate, it seems — Kate Lanphear. The ultimate garconne, in her piled-on black layers, Kate saw the proverbial light in this round of Fashion Week, with the addition of well-tailored whites: a white tuxedo blazer over a black dress shirt and pants, an oversized blazer, in black, over just-as-inky trousers and a white dress shirt with contrast buttons; or even a play with sheer-on-opaque, via a flowy LBD (Kate’s own well-done concession to femininity) over the requisite opaque leggings. Paired with her signature spiked wrist armor, and her current penchant for religiously iconographic neckpieces, Kate is my idea of the ultimate, femmebot rockstar. “I collect old Helmut Lang and Margiela,” Kate once told New York mag. “Although my new thing is Azzedine Alaïa — the boys seem to dig it.”

Vika Gazinskaya

Young Russian designer Vika Gazinskaya makes the confluence of opposites seem like child’s play. Herself a bearer of impish charm — with her asymmetric-banged bowl cut, elfin features, and petite frame (not to mention a name that rolls off the tongue) — Vika strikes the perfect balance between modern and vintage, playing with shape, fabric, and styling, to create reservedly quirky looks — one minute in a grandmarm dress and the next in a heavy coat with cocoon shoulders, or maybe even all at once, mixing an evening-elegant duchesse satin maxiskirt and structural red blouse with downtown-futuristic Cyclops shades. The same goes for the designer’s aesthetic, of crafting industrial-feel pieces with an old-world integrity that renders the final output neither clinical nor too cold, which again ties back to her brand of dressing. Outside one of the shows, she was spotted wearing a silk blazer, sans blouse, for what would translate as a daring deep v on others, but on her, looked pleasantly disarming.