NewYork fashion weekTory Burch's icons are often drawn from the arts: Celluloid swans like Romy Schneider, muse of her Spring collection, or Adele Bloch-Bauer, gilded angel of Gustav Klimt, who haunted her line last Fall. For Pre-Fall, she landed on an avatar of a more obscure sort: Gertrud Arndt, a weaver and self-taught photographer, who worked on the periphery of the Bauhaus. "I always loved her," Burch said, "and never felt she got much recognition."

Arndt's best-known works are self-portraits, the most famous of which have her in a dotted, embroidered veil. Burch lifted the dot motif for her collection: polka-dotted print mikado dresses and pleated skirts, tap shorts, and pointy-toed slingbacks. The range overall emphasized texture and graphic print, not in Burch's usually super-embellished mode, but via something darker and starker. It wasn't minimal—not with a geometric woven coat, lined in crinkle patent, worn over an abstract geometric dress—but it had a harder edge than it sometimes does. The masculine component may account for that. Arndt was a woman working in a male-dominated world; so, in her way, is Burch. She has always had a tomboy streak, but here she showed an old-world elegance that belied the kicky kneesocks and crop tops. Her wide, cropped trousers and high-neck bib-front shirts and tunics attested to that.

Fashion Brand: Tory Burch | www.toryburch.com

Tuoliboqi (Tory Burch) is popular among young U.S. women's fashion brands, and its founder is Tuoliboqi (Tory Burch) President. Tuoliboqi (Tory Burch) The main products are ladies, bags, accessories and footwear, the most famous of which is its double-T LOGO's flat ballet shoes.