Many designers across New York Fashion Week have been exploring the idea of reworking the mundane to fit the modern woman’s wardrobe by putting their own spin on it with personality-driven twists, ’90s nods and more. 

Joseph Altuzarra is one of them. He’s actually been excelling at it for a handful of seasons now with character-driven dress. For fall, he delivered once again through a collection that embraced the contrasts, adding ample drama to the everyday. The book placed on each showgoer’s seat — “How to Be Both” by Ali Smith — directly nodded to fall’s duality.

“I loved Rosalía’s [Berghain] music video, where there’s an orchestra playing while she’s ironing. As fall started to come together, a lot of what we were interested in was, ‘how do we infuse the sort of mundane, what people wear on the street every day, with the drama?’” Altuzarra said during a preview, citing further inspirations of emotions and palette from Pedro Almodóvar’s and Luis Buñuel’s films and Diego Velázquez’s Spanish Renaissance paintings.

His inspirations brought forth a distinctly Spanish lens, as seen through an array of dramatic flamenco skirts, some light as air in chiffons and georgette, topped with sturdy peacoats, with furry sleeves or exaggerated collars. Altuzarra’s dresses, his biggest category, had just as much ease and excitement with sprays of tubular pom-pom fringes or anatomical body prints, updated this season with shadows of bugle beads and sequins. Everyday elegance came through romantic Chantilly lace or softly ruffled layers beneath his upped ante of leather and shearling outerwear.

The balance of drama with ease extended to the simplest of pieces: turtlenecks with elongated, caped backs atop a turf green scarf skirt with a Balearic fishnet print or a great pair of sleek leather carpenter pants. 

“This pant we’re actually producing for every model because every model who’s tried it on has asked for it. It’s been a nice vote of confidence,” he said of this season’s essential bottoms, which also came in luxe suede, cotton canvas and denim.