Modern Red-Carpet Looks, in a Perfect World

A Story by diggs

His scrollwork embroideries and sophisticated florals have yet to garner a reliable red-carpet following for Antonio Marras. No matter. The designer’s aims are lofty: Nothing less, he said, than “to try to defeat banality and platitudes in fashion.”

Mr. Marras was one of a handful of designers invited in advance of awards season to sketch their hypothetical concepts for modern red-carpet looks. Their singular efforts are showcased here.

“For a cool young woman on her big night,” Mr. Marras said, “I would go for a mix between masculine and feminine, between luxury and low-profile,” as in a sumptuously understated sleeveless dinner jacket and trousers, a turnout that in his judgment, is “a perfect adaptation of sensuality, seduction and charm.”

His peers, whose offerings merit their own red-carpet debuts, subscribe to a similarly relaxed formality, shrugging off shopworn conceits like fairy-tale ball gowns, Rita Hayworth halter looks or va-va-voom mermaid dresses in favor of looks that more aptly reflect the way a savvy young woman may actually dress.

For Donna Kang of Timo Weiland, a truly extravagant night on the town calls for nothing more fussy than a multipleated skirt and navel-baring blazer, worn, as she brashly suggested, “with nothing at all underneath.”

Just as youthfully provocative is Rosetta Getty’s white bralette top mated with sweeping palazzo pants, the sliver of skin exposed between top and bottom. “Alluring, but not vulgar,” she said.

Katherine Holmgren’s starkly dramatic backless gown for Galvan telegraphed an equally pared down, contemporary glamour.

In contrast, Sofia Sizzi’s proposal for her label Giulietta, all sweetly puffed shoulders and calf-grazing hem, projected a girlish naïveté. Look twice, though, and the wedge-shaped cutout traveling to its waist sends a different message, rendering Ms. Sizzi’s frock less innocent than insolent.