How do I wear a mixture of tribal patterns without looking like a clown?
I have a few favorite clown moments that don’t have much to do with fashion but that anyone worth her salt in cultural references should be aware of. My favorite is the Mary Tyler Moore episode in which Chuckles the Clown, dressed as a peanut, is crushed to death by a rogue elephant who mistakenly tries to shuck him. My point—and, yes, I do have one—is that fashion is in such a period of free-form, exhilarated expression when it comes to these references that you stand about as much of a chance of looking like a clown as you do of getting shucked by an elephant. This season, Ohne Titel’s Flora Gill and Alexa Adams took their inspiration from Egyptian wall paintings of the New Kingdom (1570–1070 b.c.). By combining neutrals with red and black (the preferred colors of the era) and crosscutting color-block patterns into knits and tailoring, the look is as friendly for the office as for a night on the town and needs no accessories except a sexy sandal. Dries Van Noten is a particularly tal
