For his pre-fall collection, Peter Copping, artistic director of Nina Ricci, was looking at the work of Rotterdam street documentarians Ari Versluis and Ellie Uyttenbroek. For a series they called “Exactitudes,” the duo spent some sixteen years photographing style tribes around the world, chronicling their uniforms, and their impulse to dress in a way that bonded them visually and socially with their peers.  That got Copping thinking about uniforms of the Nina Ricci variety, identifying and then manipulating the codes associated with the house.

Of course, the notion that there are any recognizable codes to associate with Ricci at all is entirely due to Copping’s ever more brilliant and sure-handed leadership; in the space of a few short years, he has managed to reach the point that what is, and isn’t, absolutely Ricci can be read 50 paces away. At first glance, “ladylike” is the word that springs to mind, because of the abundance of pleats, bows, lace, jeweling, lingerie, fur, and general all round cocktailania. Except, it doesn’t really quite say enough. Somehow, Copping can take all that and transform it by taking it down to something that feels unfussy and undone and anything but uptight—and yet keep everything looking ravishingly beautiful.

For pre-fall, then, it’s those now-familiar Ricci tropes—the pencil skirt, the little black dress, the skirt suit, the pump, the sweater—reinvigorated in all manner of original ways. An LBD gets rendered in a stretch chiffon and radzimir to look like two separate pieces. A hot-pink coat, cut to look a little oversize—expect this trend to only grow, as pre-fall goes on—was inspired by the loose ease of the traditional military parka.