The idyllic sensuality of Khaite's SS27 Catherine Holstein makes her new collection a manifesto of the female body

Sensuality — is it exposure or concealment? Light or shadow? According to Catherine Holstein, founder and creative director of Khaite, the romantic art of seduction seems to lie somewhere in between, in the half-light that precedes the flash of the spotlights, when the contours of the female body are recognizable but not yet fully defined. This is the starting point for the New York brand's SS27 collection, as it approaches its tenth year in business. A long game of now-you-see-it-now-you-don't, in which Kaia Gerber opens the show with a purposeful stride — as though she has a destination in mind — wearing a white brassiere and a high-waisted black leather skirt. A body outlined but never exposed.

This is perhaps what Catherine Holstein knows best — the celebratory art of female sensuality. Throughout the collection, the bust is emphasized by visible bras and necklines constructed like lingerie, the waist is cinched, raised, or left to peek through between two garments, while the hips are alternately concealed and amplified by knots, fabric panels, and skirts that look as though they were tied around the body seconds before leaving the house. There is almost never a truly clean line — an unsettling sensation, in fact — something slips off a shoulder, something stays open, something still seems to be in the process of being fastened.

Sheer shirts and ruffled blouses look as though they were just thrown on; dresses and slips retain that slightly imperfect quality of a garment tried on in front of the mirror, while bows, corsets, and lingerie remain deliberately visible. This is a sensuality that belongs more to the bedroom than to a Brooklyn warehouse, because it preserves something private. Even when the body is almost entirely covered — with long skirts, soft trousers, or dresses that fall below the knee — transparency continues to hint at its presence. Even the flowers, omnipresent throughout, are not simply printed onto fabric; instead, they seem to grow from the body itself, embroidered on sheer mesh that allows skin to emerge between petals and leaves. Leather, the brand's cornerstone, is not absent from this collection either, but after several seasons it finally shifts in proportion: with shorter, tighter, more structured jackets, the shoulders rise, the skirts cling to the body, leaving behind the oversized silhouette that has defined much of the brand's aesthetic.

Completing the collection's world is the soundtrack, which opens with Rid of Me by PJ Harvey. The woman Holstein imagines can be romantic — she can wear lace, bows, flowers, and slips — without any of these elements necessarily making her fragile. She walks fast, looks straight ahead, and takes up space. In Khaite's SS27, seduction does not seem designed to attract someone else's gaze, so much as to define the relationship between the wearer and her own body. At a moment when fashion continues to question what it means to dress women, Holstein appears to start from a far simpler question: when does a woman feel most in command of her body? Khaite's answer is neither fully covered nor fully bare. It is a middle ground that knows precisely what it wants to reveal and, above all, what it prefers to leave to the imagination.