Mouret, a designer who’s sensitive to the shifting nuances of sexual identity and sexuality, challenged himself to think differently. The fabrics, for instance: If everything in the past was about taut control, for next spring he went looser and freer, both literally and metaphorically. (He compared it to sitting in a restaurant and only ordering what you’d never tried before.) While there was still quite a few looks that would take a honed physique even further—and why not? It’s what many of the Mouret-clad women sitting at the show expect from him—elsewhere he had indeed cut himself free. Take the almost folksy patching of black, white, and purple florals for the opening skirt and top, the edges gently frayed (a nod to his past as a scissormeister of late ’90s deconstruction). Or the diaphanous, gauzy lilac and claret silks for dresses which had a languid softness and lightness that felt new for him, and which were the perfect foil for the substantially scaled pendants Mouret’s sculptor husband, James Webster, had crafted. They, like the rest of what was on show here, were a labor of love.