As the designer has been creating costumes for the New York City Ballet’s Fall Fashion Gala and studying tutus by Barbara Karinksa, Balanchine’s costumer, the Zac Posen Spring 2020 collection features a rigorous structure and yards of pastel tulle.

Posen puts a particular emphasis on three dimensionality with horsehair reinforced arabesques trace from shoulder to hip on a jacquard shift; millefeuille layers of net descend in tiers from strapless neckline to hem; and papery silver “solar” taffeta billows like clouds on a floor-length gown. Posen booked the photographer Steven Sebring, and the model Winnie Harlow to capture the clothes in the round. Together in Sebring’s 360 degree photo studio the three of them have produced their own sort of ballet.

This season he did some of his early design work digitally, “torquing and twisting” and exaggerating shapes, some lifted from his earliest collections, others including that highly sculptural shift dress modeled on recent red carpet numbers. Less extreme, but still quite striking were the silk duchesse shells he showed over chiffon negligees. “Soft armor,” he called them, “feminine but ferocious.”