Ruohan Nie wanted to talk about timelessness, using soil as a metaphor. After all, what’s more timeless than the earth itself, she mused after showing a collection of linear silhouettes titled “Formless Form.”
This led her to a Chinese saying that translates to “square earth, spherical heavens,” which she promptly felt like it needed flipped on its head. In her hands, it’s chic to be square, with the shape becoming the building block for a sensual collection in which Nie played on proportions and placement to create form-fitting shapes and pared back volumes.
Cut from fluid materials like thin-gauge knit and a type of washed silk developed in the Sichuan region of China, long dresses, fitted coats and filmy tops were offered in a neutral palette of greys, creams and browns. Her only deviation from the earthy palette was a burnt orange, although it arguably also is a shade found in the ground.
Among the standouts were those pieces that showed Nie’s knack for cunning construction, like sweaters with intriguing volumes, asymmetrical knits with ribbing giving them texture and a sense of movement or coats without a button in sight.
In a showroom setting, these and the rest of a lineup made of sparse separates would have sang a siren song to the hand, but put on a runway, they hit an upscale contemporary minimalism note that felt so quiet as to be almost inaudible.