The wardrobe revolution has been gathering force for months now, quietly dismantling the excesses of recent seasons across the northern hemisphere. Y2K crop tops have retreated. Faux-fur boleros and Isabel Marant wedge trainers have been relegated to storage. In their place, a new uniform has emerged: leather loafers, immaculate white shirts, hemlines that graze the knee.
READ MORE: Elements of Style: Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, Reconsidered
The catalyst, improbably, has been Love Story—Ryan Murphy’s stylish excavation of the past that sent Depop devotees scrambling to abandon their Christina Aguilera cosplay in favor of Carolyn Bessette Kennedy’s precise, pared-back vocabulary. With monochrome minimalism and the Stone Roses’ sonic architecture providing the cultural soundtrack, ’90s fever has achieved something approaching total saturation.
Which makes Gabbriette’s recent appearance all the more significant. Fashion’s premiere goth girl—the in-crowd’s resident darkling, she of the leather trousers and distressed tanks—has proven unexpectedly susceptible. On Wednesday evening, she suspended her entire established aesthetic in favor of a crisp white button-down and pencil skirt, paired with barely-there strappy sandals. No hardware. No distressing. No deliberate dishevelment. Just pure line, pure proportion, pure intention.
She arrived arm-in-arm with fiancé Matty Healy, who had elected an equally restrained combination of V-neck knitwear and straight-leg jeans. The pair appeared to be taking collective respite from their “I’m with the band” visual identity. With wedding bells somewhere on the horizon, perhaps they are preparing to trade the bleary-eyed rock-and-roll streak for something more polished, more permanently legible, more all-American.
The CBK conversion, it seems, truly spares no one.
