Only a season after Kering announced its investment in his young label, Joseph Altuzarra is positioning himself as a designer of the order of a Giorgio Armani, say, or a Calvin Klein.

Not that his brand is approaching that sort of market ubiquity (rather, it remains one of the more insider names on the New York schedule) but for the fact of his dressing women simply but seductively, in classic and feminine tailoring that celebrates their status. Workwear, in some instances, with a twist of course, prioritizing the practicality of luxury fabrics for the wearere, rather than their appearance to the beholder.

‘I was really interested in the idea of what luxury means,’ he said in his autumn 2014 shownotes. ‘To me, this collection is as much about what something looks like on the outside as what it looks like on the inside.’

So much was evident from double-faced blanket coats with contrast lapels - hot pink peeking out from military green, or cobalt on navy – and in draped, twisted and tied silk crepe day and evening dresses that owed much to the forties by way of nineties purism.

To return to the Armani comparison, there are similarities between these brand’s customers – soignee and sophisticated but with a certain mature and no-nonsense take on dressing. Altuzarra catered to her with elegant fitted sheath and bustier dresses in grey, shot through with peeking bright orange and fuchsia. He played to her jet-set tastes with a sort of homespun rough weave that took in apple green and hot pink, and became the halter-fronts of sinuous silk mid-length dresses. And he gave her practical solutions, with ‘thermal’ jackets made from shearling and piped with leather edges.

The collection was eclectic, like Altuzarra’s fanbase, but unified in that metropolitan and business-like vision, as tight and neatly tailored to his customer as the dresses were to the models.

Click the gallery to view all the looks from the Altuzarra Autumn/Winter 2014 collection