THE ORGANIZATION FOR RETURNING FASHION INTEREST: FALL 200O "NEVER SMARTY-PANTS, NEVER ARTSY-FARTSY..."

How does ORFI (The Organization for Returning Fashion Interest) manage to avoid overthinking the whole fashion thing? For such a brainy group-- made up of artists, architects, and designers who, according to their literature, "work collectively to create a visual a structural language that guides the design and development of apparel pieces and clothing"-- the collective never comes across as smarty-pants or artsy-fartsy. Instead, they somehow kinda play, rather than work, with clothing cliches, exploding them in a fun way, according to real-life usage rather than theory. (Though real life is the hardest thing to keep rediscovering, isn't it?)

For this year's show, ORFI rummaged everyone's closet for a kind of Miuccia Prada-meets-Pina Bausch look: mom's (for the fitted suit jacket), dad's (for the trousers), Aunt Mary's (for the white lady-pumps), big brother's (for the dopey parka), roommate's (for the little top that's in a color you never buy yourself), etc. The show spoke of our culture intimately but from a distance, kinda the way artist Matthew Barney's work does-- especially during the parts of the show that pushed past the theatrical to the mysteriously ceremonial. The presentation of a tray of glittering bijoux, by a beaming nymph dressed in sparkly tatters, could have come right out out of a murkily ironic dance theater piece by Bausch.

Would you dress like this? The point is that you probably already do-- and that a nice, new ORFI shirt will give you another way to think about it. Most memorable detail: the hair stapled into stiffish sheets and ridges: pretty and terrifying all at once. Least possible merchandising angle: boys in skirts. (Has never worked and, outside of Scotland and the South Seas, never will.)