This season, for the Vera Wang Spring 2019 RTW collection, the designer expressed her affection for Versailles via the exaggerated ruff collars and voluminous shoulder and sleeve treatments of the court of the Sun King.

These clothes were made for exuberant, eccentric dressers and lovers of excess, despite the mostly black-and-white color palette. Proportion play was another fixation for Wang. If there was volume up top, as in the case of her macramé-lace baby doll dresses, the legs were left bare above towering platforms.

She balanced ultrashort brocade shorts against layered torsos: capelets on top of pouf-sleeved blouses accented with peplums at the waist. The broderie anglaise gowns pooled on the ground but started off attenuated at the shoulder.

The metal rings gave a modern edge to a gauntlet-sleeved blazer that counted among the most viable pieces in the lineup. On the opposite end of the reality-fantasy spectrum, there was a pair of minidresses with outsized lace ruffs wrapping the arms at the shoulder like angels.