Three versions of black define this July 1985 American Vogue editorial: a bodysuit under a cashmere skirt, a broad-shouldered coat, then the bodysuit with patterned tights and bracelets stacked to the wrist. Andrea Blanch photographs Ashley Richardson against undecorated grey, while John Sahag pushes her blonde hair into an improbable halo. The title was “New York: A Revealing New Approach.”

Vogue’s “new” clothes were not casual. Donna Karan turned underwear into dinner dressing; Ralph Lauren put a square-shouldered cashmere coat over a turtleneck and silk-velvet stirrup trousers. In the opening page’s long black column, Richardson looks less dressed than engineered, with Carlos Falchi gloves and Wendy Gell cuffs supplying the decorative noise. The prices, $450 for the body and $1,290 for the coat, belong to a Manhattan conducted through department-store counters.

Blanch changes very little between frames, so adjustments count. Ralph Lauren’s coat makes her broad and sealed-off; the close portrait does the reverse, yet Richardson’s expression barely moves. The hair grows larger as the wardrobe gets barer, an exchange of one kind of volume for another.

Kevyn Aucoin’s makeup is quieter than the celebrity faces attached to his name. Vogue specifies pale rose on the eyes, apricot on the cheeks and gloss on the lips. None of it tries to soften the clothes. Richardson’s face remains present while the colour lets Sahag’s hair and the hard geometry below it do the talking.

Seen now, the pages feel less like a general idea of New York than a precise 1985 fantasy: expensive, controlled, ready to move from an office into dinner without changing clothes. I am not sure anyone lives that way, but Richardson makes the proposition look practical. In the final frame, the bracelets are excessive, the tights almost comic, and her calm expression refuses to acknowledge either.

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