NEW YORK — Inside Tribeca’s vintage Square Diner, with its midcentury patina and aroma of over-heated coffee, about a dozen models are not so much posing as loitering. They are munching on french fries as they perch on red vinyl banquettes. Their eyes are heavily lined and their hair has been teased into ’50s bouffants or roller-set into exaggerated curls.
And they are wearing dresses from Batsheva, the label designed by Batsheva Hay, a former lawyer who has a love for prairie dresses and buttoned-up ruffly blouses in old-fashioned cotton. Her business began two years ago as a passion project and has turned into a hot topic. And she is now a finalist in the CFDA-Vogue Fashion Fund competition.
So do not pooh-pooh prairie dresses.
The fashion industry has gotten behind them, and the modest, old-fashioned sensibility has had an influence far beyond their current popularity, which appears to be rising.
There’s a ripple of reserved femininity running through fashion. Young women have been drawn to dresses with small-scale floral prints, puffy sleeves and poofy shoulders. Hay’s vision has been the most pure. It doesn’t have the pop culture edginess of Gucci or the accessibility of Coach. Her clothes are far more earnest.