"I guess I was feeling quite nostalgic for my teenage years," Molly Goddard tells me. We're upstairs in one of the oldest pubs in SoHo, the neighborhood in which she spent those years-or at least the Friday and Saturday nights.

"Every Friday night I would make myself a new dress and we'd go out to the clubs. We all looked really different, but we were all quite dressed up," she remembers. "We customized everything back then."

All images by Portia Hunt unless otherwise noted

But her packed and highly anticipated show on Saturday night was not a retro rave or a throwback thing. It definitely had a club vibe, and it nodded once or twice to that late '90s/early '00s era, but the real reference, the truth to how those weekend memories came through, is a much subtler one.

The first thing most of the audience probably noticed is that next season is a lot less overtly girly. I was hesitant to ask her too directly what that might have been a reaction to (I didn't want to make any assumptions), but when I skirted around the issue and wondered aloud if she had tried to do any more of one thing this season or any less of another, she answered quickly that, yes, she wanted her looks to be "less frilly."

"More like how I actually dress," she clarified.

Sure, most of the dresses and separates in the show were fabricated in feminine taffetas and tulles- those are Molly's weapons of choice -but what about that camo skirt? (See above with navy top.) And the comfy pajama trousers? What about the trousers in general?

Molly Goddard makes trousers?

Molly says her personal style is like all of that-sort of low-key, layered, tomboyish. During my talk with her on a Sunday afternoon, she wears one of her shirred skirts with a long-sleeve T-shirt and some brogues.

"I thought more about how I wear my dresses. I always want to wear them with T-shirts, but we didn't have T-shirts. So now we've made some." With digital prints from the '90s club scene.

Still, this overtly counterbalanced feminism isn't exactly the point of the collection either.

The point of the collection goes back to that anti-uniform she had with her girlfriends. Everyone was different, their looks were highly customized. They all did their own thing.

Molly Goddard showing us some of her favorite pieces in her
showroom above a SoHo pub; these images by Laura Cassidy

For the first time since her turbocharged debut in 2014 (she put together a collection on a lark, and the "show" was really a party-until a bigtime Japanese retailer asked to scoop all of it up), she had a variety of fabrications, colors and prints, and enough "other" pieces to break up the preciousness of her trademark look.

Where past presentations have included twirling, voluminous armies in progressive uniform, this was a parade of individuals.

As Molly and I continue talking, we get to the subject of "kids these days," and she tells me that what bugs her about teenage girls right now is their apparent need to all look the same. To conform to some commonly held feminine ideal. Back when she was running around and dancing all night, she and her friends looked up to women like Gwen Stefani, who "stomped around in boots, even though she was really glamorous." While Molly's clothes are certainly not for preteens, her collection is a prod-or a dare-to turn away from the overtly sexy, highly polished and not very natural look that characterizes one side of popular Western culture. To stand out in a crowd.

"I like it when things are so ugly that they become pretty. And when they're so beautiful that they become dull," she says.

Women today understand that interplay, and more and more designers are toying with the equation. I have to hope there are some 15-year-olds playing along too.

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-Laura Cassidy