Even a cursory look at the Fall runways makes it clear that the industry’s top stylists are earning their keep, perhaps more than ever before. Here was a season that wore its eccentricities on its sleeve—and everywhere else. And while that unapologetic, Little Edie-esque sprezzatura spotted on runways from Gucci to Maison Margiela will surely be the province of fashion fans and street-style regulars alike by the time this story goes live, it took some of the industry’s most visionary eyes to champion it in the face of fashion-nun minimalism or, what’s arguably “worse,” normcore’s reign of tennis shoes and polo shirts.

“I don’t really know what normcore’s aesthetic stands for,” offers Benjamin Bruno. “Being boring but pretending it’s conceptual? I think everyone OD’d on the ‘bland look.’ Do we really need to see another vacuous non-identity on a runway? I don’t think so. A lookbook would probably be enough, or just a rack of clothes in a showroom.” Bruno is the longtime collaborator of fashion’s reigning boy wonder, Jonathan Anderson, and one of the relatively new breed of stylists who aren’t merely pairing blouses and skirts—they’re mapping the DNA of the brands they work with, charting a course for the clothes that lasts long after the lights go down on the runway. We checked in with Bruno and four other of the industry’s most sought-after names for their thoughts on the current state of things.

“I don’t really know what normcore’s aesthetic stands for. Being boring but pretending it’s conceptual?”

TWEET THIS QUOTEIf indeed Fall marks the beginning of a move toward something less earthbound, it comes on the heels of seasons’ worth of fairly quotidian clothes. “It seems there is still a continuation of the runway as a platform for showing a wardrobe,” says Vanessa Reid, who is regularly tapped to channel the more offbeat qualities of labels like Acne Studios and Rag & Bone. “It feels like the balance between art and commerce is a bit askew [and] the ‘total look’ phenomenon is numbing the creative freedom of the stylist. I feel there is still a need for more emotion and fashion poetry!”

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Reid’s not alone in her thinking. Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele, the matriarch of maximalism and ur-stylist-as-celebrity, thinks the excitement has gone missing, too. But with her work for Jeremy Scott at both Moschino and his eponymous label, de Dudzeele is doing her part to combat that fatigue, serving up gloriously exuberant looks that laugh in the face of the fashion nun, the kind of splashy ensembles she’s built her name upon. “Me, I need to be amused. That’s it.”

Bruno takes a similar approach: “Fashion should be about fashion.” Aspirational, fantastical, or perhaps even uncanny, like the borrowed-from-the-Eastern-Bloc beauty of Jonathan Anderson’s sophomore outing at the Spanish leather-goods house Loewe. “Phoebe Philo at Céline ‘pioneered’ what people call the ‘minimal look.’ Was it that minimal? No, it was just successfully new and ingeniously intricate. And then that look was debased on every single runway. The same with Miuccia Prada or Nicolas Ghesquière,” Bruno continues. By that token, stylists are indeed expected to bring ever more to the table, to step in, as Bruno puts it, as the “image saviors and brand builders.”

“A lot of stylists are really creative directors.”

TWEET THIS QUOTEAnderson’s is an image that hardly needs saving, but there’s not a doubt in the world that Bruno’s hand in his collections has played a strong part in making the designer’s work some of the most looked-to in the industry. His two Fall collections were among the season’s most palpably styled; Loewe alone was a gleeful mishmash of lamé, leather, patent, and knits; dense layering; and downright trippy proportions. The effect? Eerily elegant, the kind of stuff that’s sure to set the tenor for Spring ’16 collections. Back in February, Anderson toldBon magazine, “I’m not a designer’s designer. I could not cut you a dress for love nor money. And I’m openly fine with that. [...] I’m a creative director.” If that’s the case, the meeting of the minds in Bruno and Anderson, two creatives in a broader and more ambitious sense, is one that other brands might take a cue from.

That’s a sentiment echoed by Anna Trevelyan, the go-to girl for London’s high-impact youngbloods like Nasir Mazhar and Ashish: “A lot of stylists are really creative directors—they have a vision of a whole concept and are talented far beyond putting together a nice outfit. They are often the driving force.” One such force is Katie Grand, half of another industry power duo with longtime collaborator Marc Jacobs. Grand moves between editorial, commercial, and runway work with the breezy versatility to match Jacobs’ many moods—moods that are often most winning when the pendulum swings to one extreme or another. “It changes from season to season,” Grand says, “that’s the joy of fashion. While it’s extremely hard work keeping up with the needs of stores, it does mean you can almost start again every three months.” And start again they do. Fall found Jacobs making an about-face, from boxy utilitarianism to an almost homespun gothiness, name-checking Diana Vreeland and allowing Grand’s abilities to shine through in his floor-grazing skirts and cinched jackets. Backstage, Jacobs referred to the near-mania that fashion, at its best, inspires: “That complete addiction, obsession, that got-to-have-it need until I basically wouldn’t be caught dead in it.” It’s hard to imagine that in some ways Grand, in all of her exuberance, doesn’t coax that out of Jacobs—his boldest, and often most brilliant, strokes.

So ​is the role of stylist indeed a more vital one than ever before? On the runway, without a doubt; only time will tell to what degree consumers will embrace the new eclecticism in their day-to-day. After all, per Bruno, “There are good and bad stylists, as much as there are good and bad designers. Fashion requires culture, luxury knowledge, sharpness, desire, anticipation, and that vision which can’t be materialized. The eye.” With eyes like these on their side, how can the designers lose?

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