Last season s boarding-school girl has run away to become a groupie. One part Kate Hudson in Almost Famous, another part Kate Moss at Glastonbury, she wears button-front tunics and maxi dresses in multicolored French lace. She pairs bronze or fuchsia crushed-velvet short shorts—and we mean short—with mutton-sleeve blouses and studded suede vests. And she has a thing for destroyed denim, faded and frayed by hand, and cut into tiny fitted jackets and blanket coats. (Oh, and a thing for fringed-suede Christian Louboutin ankle boots. You ll never see a pair of rubber wellies at a Ruffian show because their clients aren t the type to muck around in the mud.)
As groovy as that denim was, some of the other pieces looked a bit costumey, as if the models were playing dress up in their grandmother s closets. The show s best numbers—floaty tiers of chiffon in dégradé pastels—didn t look like Monterey circa 1967, they looked like today.
