One overcast Sunday morning, Benjamin Talley Smith, an apple-cheeked 45-year-old with a thing for a Canadian tuxedo, was at the Rose Bowl flea market in Los Angeles shopping for jeans.

He was wearing jeans — a beat-up pair of Levi’s and an equally worn Levi’s jeans jacket — and rooting through piles of jeans. He wasn’t looking for collectible jeans, the classics that can fetch thousands, but rather interesting jeans: jeans with an unusual fade or some weird D.I.Y. patchwork or a striking paint splatter.

“Every jean is different,” he said with the air of an oenophile assessing a new bouquet. He was holding up a pair of jeans with some big white patches on the thighs. “Too acid-washed for me,” he said, putting them back.

He picked up another pair, pointing at a series of faded lines at each ankle. “See that honeycomb wear pattern?” he said. “That was because some cowboy had his jeans tucked into his boots. I might try to replicate that.”

Then he spied a pair of old jeans from the Japanese brand Evisu. “Look at that,” he said. He smiled. “I made those.”

Discovering his own work is not an uncommon occurrence for Mr. Smith. If fashion has a man behind the denim curtain — a wizard of jeans — he is it, a name that’s passed from brand to brand, designer to designer, like a secret password.

Scott Morrison, one of the founding fathers of premium denim in the United States, hired Mr. Smith at Earnest Sewn and then introduced him to Catherine Holstein of Khaite, who recommended him to Hali Borenstein of Reformation. Mr. Smith has also worked with Tommy Hilfiger, Alexander Wang, Rag & Bone, Juicy Couture, Helmut Lang, Marc by Marc Jacobs, Vince, Everlane, Aritzia, Jordache and Walmart, for whom he developed its sustainable Free Assembly denim, which starts at $27. His sweet spot is the place between the jeans behemoths — Levi’s, Lee, Wrangler — and the global luxury groups. When Ms. Holstein met Mr. Smith, he was introduced to her, she said, as “maybe the best denim guy in the United States.”

He consulted on her best-selling Danielle jeans — the high-waist, straight-leg style made famous by Kendall Jenner, which helped end the jegging boom and set off a quazillion TikTok videos — as well as Reformation’s Val jeans, favored by Miley Cyrus. Aside from Khaite and Reformation, Mr. Smith is currently working with Ulla Johnson, La Ligne and Spanx (the Spanx being a reinvented denim line that will be rolled out in 2025).

The other week he went to a school interview for his son, and “one of the parents was wearing a full head-to-toe Ulla look I did,” he said. “A crazy puff-sleeve denim jacket and matching skirt with huge logo buttons.”

“That, to me, is always the most fun,” he said. “I think of the jeans like my children. Whenever I see them, I’m always like, ‘Oh, that’s one of mine.’”

Given that the global jeans market is expected to reach $121.50 billion by 2030 and that there is pretty much no brand, high or low, that doesn’t dream of jeans, Mr. Smith is one of the most influential people in fashion you have never heard of.

Or never heard of until now.

The Language of Jeans

Why does a fashion designer need a denim specialist? “It’s a completely different language,” Ms. Holstein said. And denim is one of the most perennial of all clothing categories. Once customers discover a style they like, they tend to keep coming back. That’s why, when Ms. Holstein decided to start her business, Mr. Smith was the third person she signed up. He likes to call himself the denim whisperer. And she knew she needed someone to speak jeans.

In jeans, “whiskers” does not refer to feline sensory antennae but rather the thin faded lines created by sitting that radiate out at the crotch. “Ghost patches” are not supernatural; they are light or dark splotches on jeans where patches fell off. “Chevrons” have nothing to do with heraldry but refer to the little puckers down the seams of the inner thigh created when the indigo rubs off. And “the magic triangle,” a term that is the jeans equivalent of the golden mean, refers to the optimum placement of the back pockets between the yoke and the center seams.

Get it right, and it will “make your butt look really good,” Mr. Smith said.

“Mainly in my mind, jeans are about making your butt look really good,” he continued. “If you place the pockets even a quarter inch too far down on the outer edge, they frown a bit. And then you have a frowny butt. But if you just nudge them up a bit, you get happy butt.” His job is an endless quest for the platonic happy butt.

For Ms. Johnson, who has been working with Mr. Smith since late 2020, designing with denim is an entirely different practice from designing with wool, cotton or silk.

“The degree of scientific inquiry that goes into how many hours of wash you need is very, very different from questions of draping,” she said. But it matters, she said, because though only 5 percent of her collection is denim, its revenue has doubled since last year.

Then there’s the “shrinkage,” said Ms. Borenstein, the chief executive of Reformation. Shrinkage happens during the wash and affects the fit. A regular pair of pants may take a day to make and two or three fittings to perfect. A pair of jeans, however, takes “a minimum of a week,” she said. “The points of measure are much more complicated. They have to hug your legs in a lot of different ways.”

Ms. Borenstein said that denim currently accounts for about 10 percent of Reformation’s overall revenues. (Reformation introduces 25 to 30 denim pieces a month.) Denim is also Reformation’s fastest-growing category. The Val jean, in a light blue wash named for the Colorado River — is its single best-selling style this year, the first time since Reformation was founded in 2009 anything other than a dress has held that spot.

Mr. Smith said it takes an average of two years after the initial concept to understand if a product line is working on the shop floor. (Unlike some denim specialists, he helps build lines from conception through factory production, washes, etc.)

“Denim is really expensive to build,” he said. Whenever he is approached by a brand, “I always have an honest conversation that it’s going to cost 30 grand just to get the first collection off the ground,” he said (at least if it is made in Los Angeles). “Then you have to maintain it.” Nevertheless, he said, he turns away brands “fairly often.”

Denim Is Eternal

In Los Angeles, which is the heart of the American jeans world and where Mr. Smith lives, he has a loftlike office that is sort of a cross between a temple of jeans and a lab of jeans.

The wall behind his desk is hung with 51 different pairs of jeans, arrayed from dark to light, so that whenever he turns his head, he sees jeans. He has racks of jeans and shelves stacked with plastic bins full of jeans organized by wash and brand — “well over 1,000 jeans” in all. He has the first pair of jeans he ever made, back in 2000, when he was in college, and the most complicated pair of jeans he ever made, for Evisu, which was inspired by an ancient pair of Levi’s and involved so many different aged patches, each of which had to be created by hand, that one pair took two weeks to make and cost $800.

“It was not practical,” Mr. Smith said.

Mr. Smith did not expect to be a denim guy. He grew up in a small town in Vermont, the youngest of five children. His father was a photographer and bookstore owner and ran a printing press; his mother was a schoolteacher and music teacher. He was “born in a bed that my dad had built,” he said, and generally wore Carhartt.

He didn’t really think about jeans until he got to the Massachusetts College of Art and Design, when he discovered Diesel, and he certainly didn’t plan to make jeans his career — he intended to go into film and interned for Ken Burns, the documentarian — until he decided he wanted to work with his hands and switched to fashion.

A brief stint with a Boston designer took him to Paris, and then, after graduation, he got a job with Tommy Hilfiger. He was supposed to be working on outerwear, but it was 2003 and premium denim was becoming a thing. Hilfiger needed someone in jeans. Then the executive in charge of denim got sick.

“Basically they were like, ‘You have to do it all,’” Mr. Smith said. “I was 25.” So commenced his odyssey into jeans.

Though Mr. Smith dabbled briefly in his own line, called Talley and featuring made-to-order jeans that took about four weeks to produce, he decided he was happier consulting, moving from brand to brand. “It keeps me nimble to be able to make a $27 jean and then a $500 jean,” he said, referring to the Walmart-Khaite divide.

Mr. Smith splits his time between the Los Angeles office; his favorite nearby factory, Caitac Garment Processing Inc., which specializes in washes and laser- and hand-sanding (he also works with factories in Pakistan and Turkey); and an apartment in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn that he kept because he goes to New York about once a month to see clients.

In Los Angeles, he lives in Studio City, in a ranch-style bungalow built in 1937, with his wife, Danielle Robinson, a co-head of talent at Issa Rae’s ColorCreative management company, and their 5-year-old son. (Khaite’s Danielle jeans are named in his wife’s honor.) At home, he has 22 pairs of jeans that he actually wears. His wife also has a lot of jeans.

“She has hundreds of pairs, but every day she’ll say, ‘Oh, I like that one in your closet,’” he said. “And then she gets mad at me because I’ll say, ‘Oh, you have that weird window jean from five years ago. I need to borrow it for something,’ and she doesn’t think it will come back.”

Recently he was trying to replicate one of his old pairs of Levi’s for Khaite. He had been wearing them during a meeting with Ms. Holstein to review samples for the new season, and she was especially taken with the natural placement of the rips.

“It takes a lot of passion and curiosity and tenacity to really be a student of denim,” Ms. Holstein said. “I haven’t met anybody who has it like Ben has it.”

For him, each pair of jeans gives birth to the next pair, which gives birth to the next and so on. “The wash is like a living, breathing thing,” he said. “It doesn’t always come out the way you want it to, or it leads you in crazy new ways.” It’s jeanvolution in real time.

“I’m never bored,” Mr. Smith said. Whenever he’s in a crowd of strangers, he thinks to himself, I bet I have a jean in your closet.

These days “cottagecore,” the term for a popular aesthetic in recent years, may bring to mind several things. The early pandemic, say, when cottagecore started to spread rapidly on social media. Or the flouncy dresses, floral motifs, delicate décor and countryside settings that largely defined the aesthetic.

Less often has the fairy-tale look been associated with beaches or pools. Selkie, a brand that became emblematic of cottagecore fashion after the release of its Puff Dress in 2019, is hoping to change that by expanding into swimwear this year.

Selkie’s founder, Kimberley Gordon, said that with the Puff Dress — a poufy frock typically made of organza that has a fitted bodice and a voluminous skirt — she wanted to deliver “an explosion of femininity.” The style has been offered in many colors and patterns, as well as in sizes from XXS through 6X.

Selkie’s swim line, which includes bikinis and one-pieces and is priced between about $90 and $225, was also conceived with a focus on femininity and size inclusivity, Ms. Gordon, 41, said.

She was inspired by pieces from past decades — particularly, the 1930s through the 1950s, a time before revealing, overtly sexy styles started to replace more modest suits that flattered women’s bodies without showing as much skin.

“I don’t want to have to go shave or get a bikini wax every time I go swimming,” Ms. Gordon said.

The bathing suits are available in patterns like toile, gingham and banana plaid. They’re sold in the same sizes as the brand’s dresses and are meant to channel those garments’ “ethereal feel,” Justine Babb, Selkie’s head designer, said. But instead of organza, the swim line was made with materials like cotton and spandex.

“We basically wanted to make something that was like putting on a Puff Dress, or a Selkie dress, to go to the pool,” Ms. Babb, 38, said.

Most pieces have fanciful elements like ruching, ribbon ties, ruffle trims and cap sleeves. There are also swim skirts and coverups for those who, as Ms. Gordon put it, “don’t want to show their whole body when they go out.”

Some Selkie fans were unsure if bathing suits informed by the look of its “Bridgerton”-meets-Disney-princess dresses would resonate.

Camryn Garrett, 24, a freelance writer in Brooklyn, was drawn to Selkie because she “wanted to find a plus size dress that didn’t look boring,” she said. But she was somewhat skeptical about whether the brand’s approach to dresses would translate to swimwear.

“I’m wondering how they’re going to do that,” Ms. Garrett said.

Sophie Desmond, 31, another follower of the brand, said its swimwear seemed “a little out of context.”

Even so, Ms. Desmond, a freelance editor who lives outside Washington, D.C., thinks the swimwear will find an audience. Especially with, as she put it, “grown-ups or millennials in their 30s trying to reclaim that bit of girlhood.”

Do you believe neons are to be avoided? I love bright colors, but I’m worried about trending into “wacky” territory as I get older. How do you know when enough is too much? — Susie, San Francisco

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Neon, those blindingly bright colors otherwise associated with traffic cones, sports stars and Las Vegas lights, has been making something of a comeback of late. That’s thanks, in part, to Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” complete with Margot Robbie’s neon rollerblading turn, as well as the endless specter of the 1980s and ’90s, when aerobics gave way to acid rock. Type “neon” into Tagwalk, the fashion search engine, and you’ll get 132 looks from the spring men’s and women’s wear shows alone.

Among the designers who embraced the ultrabrights for spring were Gucci, where the new designer, Sabato De Sarno, offered fluoro tailored coats with a bit of beaded fringe; the Attico, with its bright-pink ostrich feather chubby; and Tod’s, which showed an assortment of neon-yellow shirt dressing. All of which would suggest that neon is not simply a thing for the young, the ironic or the triathletes trying to up their visibility.

And yet, wearing neon, which includes that family of colors also known as “hot,” “electric” and “acid,” can seem as if you’re turning into the human equivalent of a highlighter pen.

After all, there is no neon color that appears in nature. Neon itself is not even an official part of the color wheel, since it is chemically created. It is, in fact, a relatively recent invention. The first neon light did not appear until 1910; the first neon paint was created by the Switzer brothers, Robert and Joseph, in the 1930s; and the first Day-Glo fabrics began to appear around 1950. Ever since, neon has often gotten a bad rap, associated with artificiality, vulgarity and Vegas-level kitsch.

Yet its patently synthetic, techno edge is also the reason that Andy Warhol called neon “one of the great modern things,” and that so many artists, including Bruce Nauman, Tracey Emin and Glenn Ligon, have embraced it. The American Chemical Society even declared the discovery of Day-Glo fluorescent pigment a National Historic Chemical Landmark in 2012.

Which means there’s a lot to neon besides simply shade — or a lot of shade that can be thrown at the shade — and making it part of your wardrobe takes care and consideration. If you wear it, it’s not like anyone can miss it. You have to be ready for what comes back.

Vanessa Barboni Hallik, the founder of Another Tomorrow, the environmentally conscious fashion brand, confessed to a love of neon when I asked her about it. She suggested a “barbell approach” when considering how to incorporate the brights into a wardrobe.

The easiest strategy, she said, is simply to add some electric accessories — fluoro shoes, for example, or a bright-pink shell — to a neutral base, like a dark suit or a camel dress, for a lift without serious commitment. Think of it as using highlighter shades for wardrobe highlights, rather than becoming the highlighter yourself.

However, Ms. Hallik said, if you’re going to go there, perhaps you should really go there: Opt for a full-on electric pantsuit or dress. There’s a reason that, in 2020, a movement arose called #ambitionsuitsyou, which urged women to wear hot pink suits. The brainchild of a fashion brand called Argent, created to promote equality in the workplace, the movement represented the new power suit: feminine, practical and — because it was neon — impossible to ignore.

Your Style Questions, Answered

Every week on Open Thread, Vanessa will answer a reader’s fashion-related question, which you can send to her anytime via email or Twitter. Questions are edited and condensed.

Royal portraits, as a rule, tend to be fairly staid, predictable affairs. Full of symbolism, sure, but generally symbolism of the traditional, establishment kind: symbols of state, of office, of pomp and lineage.

Which is why the new official portrait of King Charles III by Jonathan Yeo, the first since the king’s coronation, has created such a controversy.

A larger-than-life (7.5 foot-by-5.5 foot) canvas, the portrait shows the king standing in his Welsh Guards uniform, hands on the hilt of his sword, a half-smile on his face, with a butterfly hovering just over his right shoulder. His entire body is bathed in a sea of crimson, so his face appears to be floating.

Though the butterfly was apparently the key piece of semiology — meant, Mr. Yeo told the BBC, to represent Charles’s metamorphosis from prince to sovereign and his longstanding love of the environment — it was the painting’s primary color that almost instantaneously gave new meaning to the idea of “seeing red.” It was practically begging for interpretation.

“To me it gives the message the monarchy is going up in flames or the king is burning in hell,” one commentator wrote under the royal family’s Instagram post when the portrait was unveiled.

“It looks like he’s bathing in blood,” another wrote. Someone else raised the idea of “colonial bloodshed.” There were comparisons to the devil. And so on. There was even a mention of the Tampax affair, a reference to an infamous comment by Charles revealed when his phone was hacked during the demise of his marriage to Diana, Princess of Wales.

It turns out that red is a trigger color for almost everyone — especially given the somewhat meta endeavor that is royal portraiture: a representation of a representation, made for posterity.

In his interview with the BBC, Mr. Yeo noted that when the king first saw the painting, he was “initially mildly surprised by the strong color,” which may be an understatement. Mr. Yeo said his goal was to produce a more modern royal portrait, reflecting Charles’s desire to be a more modern monarch, reducing the number of working royals and scaling back the pageantry of the coronation (all things being relative).

Still, the choice of shade seems particularly fraught given the … well, firestorm the king has endured since his ascension to the throne.

Consider, for example, the continued falling out with his second son, Prince Harry, and the publication of Harry’s memoir, with its allegations of royal racism; the related calls for an end to the monarchy; Charles’s cancer diagnosis; and the furor over the mystery about Catherine, Princess of Wales, whose own cancer diagnosis was revealed only after increasingly unhinged speculation about her disappearance from public life.

Queen Camilla, who has been through her own ring of flames, reportedly told the artist, “You’ve got him.”

It’s hard to imagine Mr. Yeo didn’t anticipate some of the reaction to the portrait, especially in the context of his past work, including portraits of Prince Philip, the king’s father, and Queen Camilla, which are more traditional depictions. Indeed, the last time a royal portraitist attempted a more abstract, contemporary interpretation of their subject — a 1998 portrait of Queen Elizabeth II by Justin Mortimer, which depicted the queen against a neon yellow background with a splash of yellow bisecting her neck — it produced a similar public outcry. The Daily Mail accused the artist of cutting off the queen’s head.

The portrait of King Charles will remain on display at the Philip Mould Gallery until mid-June, when it will move to Drapers’ Hall in London. (It was commissioned by the Worshipful Company of Drapers, a medieval guild turned philanthropy, to reside among hundreds of other, more orthodox royal portraits.)

In that setting, Mr. Yeo’s work may be especially telling: reflective of not just a monarch, but also the evolution of the role itself, the conflicts around the job and a king captured forevermore in what very much looks like the hot seat.

Leave it to the Parisians to ace the “Canadian tuxedo.” Taking to Instagram recently with a series of street-style posts, the French photographer Ludovic Pieterson (@thestylearchivist) posted a reel titled “How people style total denim in Paris” and proved beyond any reasonable doubt that a style last in favor during the Rolling Stones’ “Voodoo Lounge” tour was back.

Fashion savants, of course, have been proclaiming the return of “double denim” for some time, predicting, with the bland assurance of carnival fortune tellers, that the future lies ahead. Yet, suddenly, in look after look, there was the proof: full denim outfits worn with theme-and-variation twists on a classic get-up comprising a denim trucker jacket and bluejeans, captured by Mr. Pieterson in seemingly every possible wash, permutation and silhouette.

Surely the best of these belonged to an anonymous man caught striding around a corner on the Right Bank, smack in the middle of the city’s old financial district, wearing aviator shades, an indigo four-pocket jacket that hit right at the waistline and some mid-blue jeans so crisp they could probably stand on their own. With the denim he wore a sharp white spread-collar shirt and a neatly knotted necktie. Possibly it was a Gallic touch too much that he had accessorized the look with a baguette tucked under one arm.

The next time naysayers cluck that the suit is dead, his is the image I’ll point to, with the admonishment that, four centuries into its evolution, the foolproof combination of jacket and trousers in matching fabrics seems as vital as ever.

One thing that time and recent events have altered is our relationship to the formality of traditional suiting and, for that matter, to formality itself. “Effortless is the new take on ‘I don’t care,’” the stylist Mark Avery said one recent morning from London. “Purposeful but casual,” he added, is the logical alternative to the schlumpiness of hoodies and sweats that dominated the early pandemic years.

Hollywood insiders know Mr. Avery as Ryan Gosling’s stylist, the guy that dressed the “Barbie” star in a pink silk suit and creased black Stetson for the Oscars. He is also someone who has worn double denim for decades, a horseless cowboy who serves as a walking advertisement for a style he first fell in love with watching old Westerns on TV.

In London for the filming of “Project Hail Mary,” Mr. Gosling’s new film about an astronaut rocketed into the galaxy in an effort to save an endangered Earth, Mr. Avery had taken his eye-catching style for a jet-lagged walk along Portobello Road, dressed like Gene Autry. Not everyone could pull off the battered cowboy hat Mr. Avery sported. As for the double denim suit, “it’s pretty much a foolproof formula anyone can wear,” he said.

Celebrities seem to think so, judging by sightings of people as stylistically unalike as Pamela Anderson, Julianne Moore and Gigi Hadid — all dressed in head-to-toe denim. Designers, too, have grabbed onto the look, with double denims all but ubiquitous on runways at Louis Vuitton, Victoria Beckham, Willy Chavarria and even Chanel.

“What I love is that double denim does the same thing a suit does,” Mr. Avery said. “Even when you do it in denim, it creates this vibe of being put together and intentional.”

There is something else, Samuel Hine, a fashion writer at GQ, said about double denim: With its roots in workwear, it is unambiguously American in its origins and stands as a corrective to a lot of the giddier and sometimes unwearable stuff designers crank out. At least in part it is an acknowledgment — tacit at Chanel, explicit at Louis Vuitton — of values aligned with the needs of new consumers. “Simple utilitarian clothing is connecting in a meaningful way,” Mr. Hine said.

And, like any suit, it is essentially a recipe. “The great thing about double denim,” Mr. Hine said, “is that you don’t have to overthink it.”

That is almost true. Given the light years it will take for the horror of Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake’s appearance at the American Music Awards in 2001 wearing coordinated head-to-toe stonewashed denims to fade from memory, it is clear that, if not styled smartly, double denim can easily veer into cosplay or, worse yet, dadcore.

“There was always a stigma about double denim,’’ said James Scully, a former modeling agent who opened Jamestown Hudson, a multibrand retail store in Hudson, N.Y., early this month. “We sold a ton of denim jackets and trousers in our first two days,” he said, referring to labels like RTH, RRL, Samuel Zelig, Transnomadica and Officine Générale. “Obviously, you can go to more places in double denim than you can in a tracksuit or sweats.”

Was anything ever worse than the sweats trend? Not for Jess Cuevas, a creative director in Los Angeles who has worked with Willy Chavarria and who styled the artwork for Madonna’s “Celebration” tour. “For me, double denim is a classic,” he said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s giant jackets with giant pants, tiny jackets with big pants, the oversize and creased 501s that are a staple in Chicano culture. You can’t go wrong.”

In the lexicon of style, double denim is a constant, the designer Todd Snyder noted last week over lunch in Manhattan. “I’ve always loved denim-on-denim, even when it was out.” Anyway, the arbitrariness of “in” and “out” distinctions seems out of step in an era when designers and consumers draw freely from a decontextualized slipstream of Pinterest imagery. “Anything styled the right way is right,’’ Mr. Snyder said.

How does he style it? “The classic Canadian tuxedo is straight-leg five-point jeans with a trucker jacket,” Mr. Snyder said. “A belt is a must to keep it from looking like a costume.”

Todd Snyder aficionados know that the designer is a fan of rigid denim, which “gives you more of an authentic, Japanese vintage dealer vibe,” he said. Bleached denim, too, is a favorite, provided it’s paired with a second element in the same wash.

And proportion is key. “Maybe you have oversize jeans with a paper-bag waist,” he said. “Wear that with a chore coat or contrast it with a tightfitting trucker.”

Finally, it’s the footwear that finishes the look. “The one thing you don’t want to do is wear double denim with cowboy boots,” Mr. Snyder said. “You can’t be so literal. Add sneakers, a blucher or a desert boot instead.”

Debates can get, well, ugly in Congress, but rarely do they descend to the level of physical taunts. Yet that is exactly what happened on Thursday during a meeting of the House Oversight Committee.

During a discussion about whether Attorney General Merrick B. Garland should be held in contempt of Congress, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, told Representative Jasmine Crockett, a Democrat from Texas, “I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading.”

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a Democrat from New York whose own signature red lipstick has become something of an online lightning rod, then leaped to Ms. Crockett’s defense.

“How dare you attack the physical appearance of another person,” she said.

Further name-calling ensued, culminating in Ms. Crockett’s covertly returning the insult by asking the chair, James R. Comer, “If someone on this committee then starts talking about somebody’s bleach blond, bad-built butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?” (That description being a not-entirely-implicit reference to Ms. Greene.)

All in all, not a pretty moment.

As much as anything, however, the makeup vs. body image brouhaha reflects not just the way Capitol norms have changed over the last six years, but the way physical appearances have become weaponized against all genders since Donald J. Trump first took office, bringing with him his penchant for costumery, casting and playground insults.

Whether it’s calling Stormy Daniels “horseface,” saying Rosie O’Donnell had a “fat, ugly face,” anointing Marco Rubio “little,” comparing his former aide ​​Omarosa Manigault Newman to a “dog,” dismissing E. Jean Carroll as “not my type,” or criticizing Nikki Haley’s dress choice, the former president and current presidential candidate has made an art out of the playground insult. With these barbs, he attacks not policy positions but rather shared insecurities, rooted deep in old gender politics and stereotypes. It’s like a wormhole back to middle school, and everyone can relate.

Which also makes it particularly effective. After all, few forms of ridicule are as belittling as being reduced to a body part, or being called out for your beauty choices, especially in the context of a public career. It’s the essence of objectification.

This scrutiny is even more loaded when it comes to women, who have historically borne the burden of surface evaluation. Indeed, it’s hard (though not impossible) to imagine Ms. Greene’s fellow committee member Jim Jordan being jeered at for his receding hairline, or someone slagging on Chuck Schumer for his wrinkles.

The rare times appearance has been raised in the recent past, it most often has been used as a form of humor — by the person involved. Hillary Clinton, for example, joked about her own hair color when she was running for president. “I may not be the youngest candidate in the race, but I have one big advantage: I’ve been coloring my hair for years,” she said in 2015. “You’re not going to see me turning white in the White House.”

It’s a different story, however, when the jab comes from someone else. Not long ago, the comedian Michelle Wolf was castigated for a set at the 2018 White House Correspondent’s Dinner in which she mocked the eye shadow of Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the press secretary, saying, “She burns facts, then uses that ash to create the perfect smoky eye.”

At the time, her comments provoked criticism from both sides of the aisle. Mika Brzezinski, the co-host of “Morning Joe” and a woman Mr. Trump had once described as “bleeding badly from a face-lift,” said she could empathize. “Watching a wife and mother be humiliated on national television for her looks is deplorable,” she said.

Apparently, that truce no longer holds. Now it appears Mr. Trump’s supporters in Congress, such as Ms. Greene, are simply following his lead, in this way as in so many others. Their opponents, meanwhile, are lowering themselves to the occasion. In which case, who really wins?

The fashion world loves a little black dress. But what if you look like a corpse in dark colors? What suggestions do you have for an alternative that can go on trips, on dates and to parties and can be accessorized in such a way that people see it as a different outfit each time you wear it? Is there such a thing? — Robin, Dammeron Valley, Utah

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The little black dress has been regarded as a holy grail of fashion ever since Coco Chanel championed the concept back in 1926, proffering it as an alternative to the fussier, more colorful frocks popular at the time. Heralded by American Vogue, which called the little black dress the haute version of “the Ford” and declared that it would be “a sort of uniform for all women of taste,” as well as Christian Dior, who called it “essential,” it combined utilitarianism and sophistication.

Anyone in doubt simply had to look to Audrey Hepburn in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”; Jackie Kennedy, who wore one for Richard Avedon’s 1961 portrait of the first couple; and Princess Diana, whose famous “revenge dress” was the ultimate little black dress. At this point, the garment has become so ubiquitous it has its own acronym: the LBD.

The problem is, as you note, not everyone loves, or looks good in, black. Not everyone even loves a dress. So what to do?

Embrace poetic license.

Instead of thinking of the LBD as a “little black dress,” think of it as a “little basic dress.” Or even “little basic duds.” The point is to keep the ethos of the LBD — the idea that a simple, easy garment with a fabulous line can take you pretty much anywhere — but free yourself from the restriction of color and garment.

That means thinking of what, for you, would be the equivalent. Perhaps it is a little navy dress. Or a little ivory one. Maybe even a little beige one. Perhaps it is a great trouser suit (maybe even a tuxedo) in a jewel tone like emerald or sapphire.

Whatever you come up with, it has to fulfill certain criteria: It should be a neutral but plush enough material to evade categorization, in a color that doesn’t immediately inspire a host of associations, and be cut exactingly enough to carry a look on its own — and free of distracting frippery.

Stay away from linen, which screams summer and wrinkles; denim, which is more casual; and synthetics. Avoid hot pinks and chartreuse. (Avoid neon in general.) Look for medium-weight wools, silks or a ponte knit. And remember: Simplicity leaves nowhere to hide, so details like necklines, placement of the seams and finishing matter.

Then consider stretching your budget. If you are going to have one go-to item, it’s worth an investment. You can amortize the cost across the anticipated number of times you’ll wear it.

Finally, consider context. A great dress or trouser suit worn with sneakers, shades and a straw hat can go for a stroll in the city or to a farmers’ market. Add sandals and jewelry, and it can go to cocktails. Swap in spike heels, a fancy clutch and more gems, and it’s black tie. Take a cue from the OG LBD model, Chanel herself, draped in her pearls and camellias.

In the end, the genius of the LBD, however you define it, is that it is, in essence, simply a basic sartorial canvas on which you can impose your personality as the occasion demands. Paint away.

Your Style Questions, Answered

Every week on Open Thread, Vanessa will answer a reader’s fashion-related question, which you can send to her anytime via email or X. Questions are edited and condensed.

Time may be divided into past, present and future, but for the independent Swiss watchmaker Ludovic Ballouard, the only time that counts is the present.

It’s a philosophy he developed the hard way, through personal suffering and loss. Watching his wife, Eveline, endure cancer for 10 years took a toll. “I realized you have to live in the moment,” he said. “Time is now.”

Mr. Ballouard’s work, known for being innovative yet iconoclastic, expresses his carpe-diem approach to life. On the rule-breaking Upside Down watch introduced in 2009, 11 of the hour markers are displayed upside down on the dial — the only one right-side up tells the current hour, the present.

As he sipped espresso in his atelier about six miles outside Geneva, he took one of his Upside Down watches out of its case and showed how it worked, turning the hands until the number of the current hour flipped up. Then he showed the clear, skeleton back, with the B01 movement he created, and pointed out that he had used 200-year-old techniques. “I got the idea when I was repairing old watches,” he said.

His other watch style, the Half Time with the B02 movement he created, came out in 2012 in homage to Eveline, who died in 2017. The watch, he said, expressed the “spirit of love as two pieces on the dial come together” to show the time. The hours on the dial are unreadable except for the current one. “The past is gone,” he said. “The future is unknown,” and only the present hour “clicks in place, so you focus on the present moment.”

His Upside Down and Half Time watches are “a very classic design, not show-offs, but classic with complications,” he said. He works in red gold and platinum and dials can be malachite, meteorite, aventurine, lapis lazuli, osmium or studded with diamonds, enameled or guillochéd by the noted horologist Brittany Nicole Cox, who “only works for me,” he said.

The numerals on the custom-made watches can be Roman, Arabic, Hebrew, Chinese or Thai. The buckles on the often-alligator straps form the letter B. Each watch is presented in a box made of oak from Brittany, France, where Mr. Ballouard grew up.

The waiting list for his watches is 18 months and that’s fine with him. “We want to remain small,” he said. The price of the standard Upside Down model with a platinum case is 87,000 Swiss francs, or about $76,000, excluding taxes, and the most expensive Upside Down with an osmium dial is 180,000 francs, excluding taxes.

The watches are made in his atelier in the village of Avusy in a 200-year-old building that once was a post office. His work room, while compact, is open, airy and modern, with one big square work table for him and two assistants. Last year they made 35 watches — 30 Upside Down, five Half Time.

Pride of place is given to an antique pendulum clock that had been in his family home in Brittany. As a child, “I always listened to its chimes,” he said.

Back then, his passion was airplanes and his hobby was building model planes from scratch. In 1989, he graduated from watchmaking school in Rennes, France, and worked in Dinard restoring the instruments and timepieces on airplane instrument panels.

“It was the best experience,” he said. “Many of the pieces were ancient,” and in repairing them he learned the many ways they had been constructed over the years.

Determined to pursue a career in watchmaking, he moved to Geneva in 1998. He got a job at the luxury watchmaker Franck Muller and stayed for three years.

Along the way, Mr. Ballouard met Eveline, who worked at Vacheron Constantin, and he then began freelancing for that brand before signing on with F.P. Journe for seven years.

The experience was tremendous, he said. “After four years I started making the Grand Sonnerie,” a complicated, prestigious type of watch. “The more the complications,” he said, “the more it pleases me.”

In 2009, after the financial crisis hit the industry, Mr. Ballouard said F.P. Journe downsized and he was out of a job. He had been thinking of starting his own brand, and Eveline encouraged him to do so.

“She told me to follow my heart,” he said, adding that because of the crisis, “suppliers had a lot of time. They needed customers. I could ask for anything, and I didn’t have to wait. I could get movements in two months instead of two years.”

Wasting no time, he started Montres Ludovic Ballouard — now called simply Ludovic Ballouard — and by the end of 2009 he had introduced the Upside Down.

One particularly prestigious assignment came from Harry Winston to create the Opus XVIII watch, and to do so in just 11 months. He hired staff to help, and the watch debuted at Baselworld in 2013.

But his wife “was getting more and more sick,” he said. “That’s when I realized the past is gone, the future is unknown. Only the present moment is real.”

So he set about creating a new present. Within months of her death, he moved from busy, bustling Geneva to Avusy, where he has a cottage near his atelier with his wife, Flavia, an Italian business executive, and their 5-year-old son, Gabriel.

Mr. Ballouard said he entertained clients and watch fans in Avusy. His specialty is raclette, which he serves in the field, with a view of grazing goats, using a tractor as a serving table.

One client who Mr. Ballouard said was a regular visitor is Edward Tonkin, a retired car dealer in Portland, Ore., who owns two Upside Downs and one Half Time, the first one Mr. Ballouard made.

“I fell in love with this amazing, unique, never-before-done-and-not-since-either timepiece, but not nearly as much as I fell in love with Ludo,” he wrote in an email.

“His creativity knows no bounds, and he is a most passionate curator of his craft,” Mr. Tonkin wrote. “ A true watchmaker in every sense of the word.”

Mr. Ballouard, however, insists that the creation he is proudest of is Gabriel. Together they have started what the watchmaker calls “a collaboration, Ludovic Ballouard et Fils.”

“Gabriel is such an artist, he made his own watch,” Flavia said. It’s called the Gaga Watch — Gabriel’s nickname — and features the child’s design of bright colors on the face of the Upside Down.

It’s the watch his father wears, every day, past, present and future.

The commissioning of architects to design watches has been a thing at least since the 1950s. In more recent times, some brands have asked winners of architecture’s highest honor, the Pritzker Prize, to design a timepiece.

Thus far 10 of the 53 recipients of the award, given annually since 1979, have taken a horological detour at least once, the most recent being the Canada-born U.S. citizen Frank Gehry who won in 1989.

In the early 2000s, a Fossil collaboration used Mr. Gehry’s handwriting to create an LCD font for a digital watch. This past March he entered into high horology’s world of complicated timepieces by designing the dial of the $935,000 43.8-millimeter Louis Vuitton Tambour Moon Flying Tourbillon Poinçon De Genève Sapphire Frank Gehry.

Mr. Gehry, 95, who lives in Santa Monica, Calif., is noted for his designs of the Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain and the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. He wrote in an email that watchmaking and architecture “both help us synchronize with the world we live in and clarify the lives we live.”

It was the curved glass on the Louis Vuitton Maison Seoul that inspired his contribution to the complex Tambour model.

The shop has a facade reminiscent of weightless, floating glass sails and the watch case and dial are cut from a single 441-pound block of sapphire crystal; the paper-thin dial alone taking about 250 hours to craft, first using computer numerical control machines followed by delicate hand polishing, all done at Louis Vuitton’s La Fabrique du Temps specialist watchmaking center in Geneva.

“I love the challenge of working on such a small scale,” Mr. Gehry said. He called the design “very simple, but the way the light plays on the shapes makes the watch ever-changing.”

Much like his curvy buildings.

“No matter what you are designing, it starts with understanding the goals for your client and for the users,” Mr. Gehry wrote.

“But all along, you as the architect have to have the dream vision in mind,” he wrote. “You have to know where and how to compromise along the way to keep the integrity of the design in tact.”

Another Pritzker winner, Edouardo Souto de Moura, 71, of Portugal, who received the prize in 2011, says it was his love of watches, machines, and cars that made him say yes when Asier Mateo, an architect and founder of the Barcelona-based brand Lebond Watches, asked him to design the brand’s second watch.

Mr. Mateo said that all Lebond designs were made by architects who were given free rein on design and materials. They only need to include a movement they are given and both the Lebond brand name and the architect’s surname on the dial, he said at the factory in Bienne that makes the watches.

That led to the creation of the Lebond Souto Moura, 2,700 euros (about $2,900), which was released in March. It is a slim (7.6-millimeter) watch with a 38.5-millimeter microsanded titanium case housing a cream-colored, lacquered dial with black stick hands. The elongated minute hand is accompanied by a shorter, thicker hour hand.

“Watches and buildings are both machines that mold our lives,” Mr. de Moura wrote in an email. “The difference between a watch and a building is scale,” he continued, adding that the watch was inspired by his principle of “minimum material for maximum function.” (That idea can also be seen in his streamlined red concrete design for the Paula Rêgo Museum in Cascais, Portugal.)

Round was his obvious choice of shape for the watch, since, as he put it, “I am not interested in squaring the circle.” The shape is emphasized by its lack of lugs, an inspiration from so-called flying saucer watches where the strap is invisibly attached to the backside of the watch. To have a quick and easy read of the time, “whether writing, drawing or driving,” Mr. de Moura opted for tilting the whole watch clockwise 30 degrees so 11 is at the top.

Another winner from Portugal was Álvaro Siza in 1992. He is still active at 90 as an architect — and as a watch designer.

In 2022 he finished his first project in the United States, a high-rise tower in New York City, and in 2023 the Lebond Siza (€2,700) was released. The 41.5-millimeter watch features a square, microsanded titanium case tilted 45 degrees, with 12 placed in the top corner. Available with a white or black dial, the design was inspired by the square Leça swimming pool in Portugal that he designed in 1966.

Rafael Moneo of Spain won the Pritzker in 1996. But the designer, now 87, of the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles and the Audrey Jones Beck Building, part of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, was not a time-telling novice. He had designed clocks for the Logroño City Hall and the Atocha Station, both in Spain.

Both emphasize noon as being the summit of the day, surrounded by “the hours related to daily activity, distinguishing between morning and afternoon,” he explained by email.

To maintain a design conversation with these clocks, he opted for a 30-millimeter square stainless-steel case and Roman numerals for the Cauny Moneo (€195), part of the Cauny’s the Architects of Time Series.

The design process of the time-only watch took the better part of a year, he wrote, describing the work as surprising: “Working with millimeters and tenths of a millimeter when accustomed to thinking in terms of centimeters and meters, has been a disciplined exercise. However, it was no surprise to see, time and again, that the sense of proportion has always been present and makes one think that both the clock and the watch came from the same hand.”

Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa, co-founders of the Japanese architecture studio Sanaa, jointly won the Pritzker in 2010 for their work with contrast, light and transparency in projects such as the New Museum in New York and the Rolex Learning Center in Lausanne, Switzerland.

Ms. Sejima, 67, relished the challenge when Bulgari asked her to create a watch for its Octo Finissimo collection.

“It has been inspirational in how it is possible to apply concepts that are usually applied to architecture to such a small object,” Ms. Sejima wrote in an email. Her design, released in 2022, is a mix of the round and the octagonal.

The stainless steel watch has a small seconds subdial at seven o’clock, mirror-polished parts and a sapphire glass filled with mirrored dots.

“I wanted to make this relation between the circular and octagonal face more organic and softer through the choice of mirrored circular dots that create a constant and dynamic exchange between the watch itself and everything that surrounds it,” she wrote.

Other Pritzker laureates who have designed watches include Tadao Ando (Bulgari), Zaha Hadid (ACME Studio and Puls), Oscar Niemeyer (Hublot), Jean Nouvel (Maurice Lacroix), and Renzo Piano (Swatch). Pritzker laureates who designed buildings for the watch industry include David Chipperfield (Rolex), Toyo Ito (Hermès) and Shigeru Ban (Swatch Group).

To Ms. Sejima, watches and architecture have a lot in common. “Like in architecture,” she wrote, “in a watch all the elements are linked together, and each link is fundamental to achieve the overall balance and functioning of the system.”

At the award ceremony for the Grand Prix d’Horlogerie de Genève last November, one winner provoked a few double takes.

The victor among six finalists in the annual design competition’s Challenge category which, last year, focused on watches priced at 2,000 Swiss francs, ($2,203) or less, was the Millesime Automatic Small Seconds, a 39.5-millimeter vintage-inspired dress watch with a steel case and a sector dial, with separate concentric hour and minute tracks.

Its maker? Raymond Weil, a brand making a new play for watch enthusiasts.

Competing against timepieces including a dive-GMT from the industry giant Seiko and a colorful chronograph from the buzzy three-year-old newcomer Studio Underd0g, the Millesime came from a brand that is known more for its affordability and its mainstream appeal than it is for earning the praises of connoisseurs.

Elie Bernheim, 43, is Raymond Weil’s chief executive and a grandson of the company’s eponymous founder, and he was among those who did not necessarily expect the watch to win.

“We had no expectations,” he said in a video call. “It’s something great, absolutely great for us.”

The timing helped to boost the profile of the brand’s wider Millesime collection, introduced this past October. “I don’t want to say that this is the first time that we have so much positive feedback from all the markets,” Mr. Bernheim said, “but it’s not far away from the reality.”

He said that new variants of the timepieces, “with different execution, different sizes, some for ladies and moon phases,” will land in stores this year, at prices ranging from $1,625 to $3,625. The new Millesime pieces were introduced at Watches and Wonders Geneva in April, the first time the brand had participated in the watch fair.

But while the brand has been a mainstay in malls and department stores — categories that have been ailing as of late — the company is revising its strategy somewhat, Mr. Bernheim said, in the form of “a more selective distribution.” It also edited its assortment, he said, to focus on four core collections, down from six.

A relatively new maker, founded in 1976 during the so-called quartz crisis, Raymond Weil built a following by offering well-priced battery-powered quartz and mechanical watches and promoting them through ad campaigns that connected the brand with the art world. The Precision Movements campaign in the 1990s, shot by the American photographer Lois Greenfield, captured dancers in the air while performing athletic choreography.

Production has reached approximately 80,000 pieces a year, according to Mr. Bernheim, who would not disclose sales figures. By comparison, Longines, a Swatch Group-owned competitor that operates in the same general price range, sells about 1.6 million pieces, according to the 2024 Morgan Stanley report on the watch industry.

The company faces no shortage of challenges in the current market.

“Once upon a time, Raymond Weil had been quite successful in a very challenging market segment — the lower-middle range,” Oliver Müller, founder of the Swiss consultancy LuxeConsult, said in a video call. But now, he said, “you have a strong competitor called Swatch Group, owning quite a few brands with the same price positioning of Raymond Weil.”

Upstarts also pose competition for Raymond Weil, Mr. Müller said, which must compete not only with strong institutional brands “but also newcomers coming from crowd-funded campaigns on Kickstarter, Indiegogo, etc.”

Still, he said, “Retailers need brands like Raymond Weil because that creates traffic in the shops, and the guy buying a Raymond Weil — or whatever — at 1,000 to 3,000 Swiss one day might buy a Tudor and then a Rolex.”

And Mr. Bernheim, the Raymond Weil chief executive, plans to remain loyal to that relatively affordable price tag. “We care about the accessibility of our watches,” he said, “and I think that it will be a mistake for the brand to go higher than the price point, at least in the short to midterm.”

James Lamdin, vice president of vintage and used timepieces for the Watches of Switzerland Group, a retailer that carries Raymond Weil, along with Longines and other brands like Rolex, Cartier and Omega, sees the brand’s strategy heading in the right direction.

“They’re looking to bring up the overall quality of construction and manufacture, particularly with more widespread use of mechanical movements,” he said, citing the direction of Raymond Weil’s flagship Freelancer line — which includes some timepieces that incorporate RW1212, the company’s first proprietary movement — along with the wider Millesime collection.

Adopting a throwback design for Millesime is a clever way to give a relatively young brand an aura of heritage and capture the attention of knowledgeable collectors, Mr. Lamdin said.

He noted that Raymond Weil is “paying tribute to an era of Swiss watch design that is certainly very popular today.”

“There’s a lot of attention to detail, and it shows that the people making the design decisions and the market decisions for their product collections are very in tune with the enthusiast buyer,” he added.

One advantage that not-so-big independent brands like Raymond Weil have over the dominant corporate groups is the ability to pivot quickly and experiment with unconventional offerings that generate excitement.

“There are limitations to what some of these big groups can produce,” Mr. Lamdin said.

That’s not a significant issue, he noted, for a family-owned brand like Raymond Weil, “that can move a little bit more lightly on their feet, that isn’t afraid to have a little bit more fun, like they did with their Basquiat piece” in its Freelancer collection.

The Raymond Weil x Basquiat Special Edition chronograph, introduced late last year, was created in collaboration with the estate of the American artist Jean-Michel Basquiat, who died in 1988.

The 43.5-millimeter titanium and black ceramic watch is emblazoned with motifs from the artist’s oeuvre: the crown, the T-Rex, and the primary color palette. With a retail price of $4,725, it sold out: Mr. Bernheim said that 85 percent of the run was spoken for within “five or six days.”

Culture and music have been consistent elements of the Raymond Weil DNA since the early 1980s, Mr. Bernheim said, when his grandfather “decided to partner with music events.” The brand has previously created watches in tribute to bands like The Beatles and The Who, and Mr. Bernheim said a collaboration would be introduced this year “centered around a popular comic book” and the artist behind it.