At Dauphinette, Ambition Is All-Consuming

Welcome to The Runway Recap, Marie Claire editors’ daily rundown of the best and most closet-worthy collections we’re seeing at fashion month.

When Olivia Cheng founded Dauphinette in 2018, she christened it “The Happiest Brand on Earth.” Her label started as a lineup of quaint, quilted floral outerwear; in the years since, it’s blossomed into a range of bright ready-to-wear and accessories so heavily embellished, hearing them walk down a runway is fashion week ASMR. But Cheng has decided happiness alone can't guide her aesthetic anymore.

Guilt was the dominant emotion threaded through Dauphinette’s fall/winter 2024 collection, shown on day two of New York Fashion Week. In a sparsely decorated church on the Bowery, the label presented “The Vegetarian”: 30 looks with a darkly glamorous edge and a title cribbed from the 2008 3OH!3 pop song “DONTTRUSTME.” The clothing was sexier and sheerer than in the past, and in several cases, it was adorned with metal cutlery—paté knives, the kind usually reserved for devouring animal guts. Belted midi skirts, tame in silhouette, were slit to reveal skin around the hip and lower stomach. One sheer white skirt was embellished with tiny safety pins.

Later on, a model appeared in a red, fully crystal-covered cape with the words “Bad To The Bone” emblazoned across the front; another wore an oversize black jacket embellished with a skimpy trompe-l'?il veil-and-underwear bridal set matching the satin pieces layered underneath. Lest that sound too sweet, it was accessorized with a mini bread-shaped bag covered in oversized studs and safety pins. The look encapsulated Dauphinette’s moment of gritty transition, made by a designer who is digging deeper into her roots and coming to terms with new desires for her brand’s future.

Cheng shared in show notes that she is indeed a vegetarian, but the show title isn’t about her dietary preferences. It’s a reference to her newfound hunger to get into the meatier stuff through her designs: the prickly, complex, and difficult feelings around freeing yourself from guilt in pursuit of your ambitions. She cited Margaret Atwood's 1974 work You Are Happy as another inspiration. The lines "Last Year I abstained/This year I devour/without guilt/which is also an art" manifested in the form of over-the-top textures, like an upcycled leather coat adorned with crystals, safety pins, and both a combination of new and vintage rhinestones for look one. These clothes said that to be happy is not the point of fashion anymore, nor is holding back. Instead, Cheng posited in her show notes, the real end game is to feel satisfied. Full.

After several consecutive seasons of pared-back, well-tailored, and neutral collections, it felt cathartic to see a women's brand lusting for more and wondering how to get there. It’s easy to call yourself driven or ambitious. It’s harder to show it off, to reveal that side of yourself, to ask for more. In a church on Saint Mark’s place, Dauphinette let it all out.