Marc Jacobs as Seen Through a Screen

I had to fly to LA on Thursday morning and as a result missed the week’s heavy weights storm out like lions to close the annual spring season in New York. Let me tell you — it was a shame, truly, to feel so disconnected from the safari-inclined sets that could have looked perfect on Annie Hall had she abandoned her aptitude for business-casual auto-outfitting and the white suits that looked like a prim alternative to the spectacularly quotidian duds of one devastatingly French Jane Birkin at Ralph Lauren.

And to watch such a slickly executed take on the definition of modern dressing at Calvin Klein from an iPhone screen? Heart breaking! (I’m being dramatic, but really!) No one — especially the X-Pro and Lo-Fi filterers — understands the value of a marriage between navy and black, or white and ivory quite like Francisco Costa does.

It was when I got back to the airport on Thursday evening to begin the second and last leg of this day-long air trip that I sat down with Marc Jacobs (the show, not the person) and thought to myself: that is smart. To have a theme that has been running deep through the veins of fashion for the greater half of this part of the aughts and to not adhere to it but effectively turn it on its head, to nip it in the bud and reinterpret it, can be the work of only a sincerely adroit artist.

This isn’t even taking into account the deft makeup routine, or lack thereof; Jacobs’ girls, with the help of Francois Nars, wore nothing but moisturizer beneath their black banged wigs. That’s Karlie Kloss, Hilary Rhoda, Gigi Hadid, Kendall Jenner and so forth, effectively naked from the neck up. And why shouldn’t they be?

But we’ve already expounded upon the multifarious reasons it’s okay to not wear makeup.

Let’s talk smart clothes.

An undistinguished army jacket — whether of the cargo variety or largely militarized would have been easy. It would have built upon what Rodarte beautifully and successfully sought out to do: make normal clothes especially extraordinary. But this is not the way of Marc Jacobs, who considered sweatshirt sleeves as elbow-length gloves (for spring? Why not!), military jackets as peacoats (both cropped and not) and utilitarian pockets as delicately frivolous ornaments, which were set upon blouses, robust mini skirts and jackets. And that he was able to do it remaining largely honest to the signature quirks he’s long established for the Marc Jacobs brand — cue the loose sleeves, large, rounded studs and short shift dresses designed with a certain whimsy to them — is another salient coup.

This rhetoric is to canvass only one initial point, though: that I wasn’t at the show. But if my reaction was this visceral, this aspirationally reflective of the genius that flourishes among the upper echelons of fashion, one must wonder: is the fashion show really integral to the success of a review? What is the real difference between being there de facto and being there remotely? Forget the livestreams, forget the real time access granted by social media. I am talking about the ability to let your mind take you somewhere from the comfort and fantasy of your vantage point vs. the reality of how far you can go when you’re sitting among the clothes, among the herds of savants purportedly thinking precisely what you want to be thinking but can’t quite muster.

Of course, though, I wasn’t there, so I’ll never really know.

Images via Style.com